Heat’s momentum again halted by another bad loss: ‘It’s just been extremely disappointing’
Just minutes after one of the worst losses of the Miami Heat’s season, coach Erik Spoelstra sat down for his postgame press conference and didn’t mince words.
“It’s just been extremely disappointing,” Spoelstra said. “Every time we get a little bit of footing on the season and then we have a disappointing loss. That’s what this was tonight.”
So much appeared to be going right for the Heat at the start of Wednesday with wins in eight of its last 11 games, riding a two-game winning streak and two games above. 500 for the first time this season with a chance to take advantage of the injury-depleted Los Angeles Lakers to continue this positive stretch.
But the Heat ended the day with a 112-109 loss to the short-handed Lakers that were missing their top three scorers in LeBron James (non-COVID illness), Anthony Davis (right foot stress injury) and Lonnie Walker IV (left knee soreness) on Wednesday night at Crypto.com Arena.
Instead of improving to 3-1 on its five-game West Coast trip, the Heat (20-19) fell to 2-2 and continues to hover around the .500 mark as it approaches the midway point of the season. Miami needs a win Friday against the Phoenix Suns (10 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and ESPN) at Footprint Center to come home with a winning record on the trip.
“You have to credit the Lakers. They played with a great motor, with a spirit with their guys out,” Spoelstra added. “We’ve had some wins like that as well, where we’ve had guys out and you can catch a team. I did not sense that at all during the course of the day. That’s just a disappointing loss.”
There were issues on both ends of the court for the Heat, which entered Wednesday’s loss as close to as full strength as it has been in weeks. Miami was able to open the game with its preferred starting lineup of Kyle Lowry, Tyler Herro, Jimmy Butler, Caleb Martin and Bam Adebayo for just the 14th time this season.
The Heat’s offense still struggled for most of the night, shooting 8 of 29 (27.6 percent) on threes. While Adebayo and Butler combined to score 57 points on 24-of-45 (53.3 percent) shooting from the field, the rest of the Heat’s roster combined to score just 52 points on 19-of-50 (38 percent) shooting from the field and 6-of-24 (25 percent) shooting from three-point range.
Those shooting problems led to the Heat’s half-court offense scoring at a very inefficient rate of 76.7 points per 100 half-court plays on Wednesday. When scoring 87 points or fewer per 100 half-court plays, the Heat is 1-9 this season.
“I think our overall offense was sluggish, particularly with how we were executing earlier on this trip,” Spoelstra said. “Even the Denver loss, we were moving the defense, working together to generate a lot of looks. This was more in the mud and weren’t really moving our bodies, getting to early triggers and then moving the ball and finding the advantage.
“It was pretty much kind of walking to a trigger, let the defense get set and then work against the second half of the clock. And that’s just not the style we’ve been playing, particularly as our offense has been improving the last few weeks.”
The Heat’s defense was the biggest issue late in the game, though.
With the Heat ahead by three points with 5:57 left in the fourth quarter, the Lakers rallied to win by scoring on 11 of their final 12 possessions despite not having James and Davis. Nearly all of the Lakers’ offense during this late-game span was generated by dribble penetration from guards Dennis Schroder and Russell Westbrook, who were able to consistently blow by the Heat’s point-of-attack defense.
“It’s part of the game,” Butler said. “We got to find a way to guard the ball. It’s as simple as that.”
Wednesday’s result was bad enough. But what makes it even more frustrating for Heat coaches and players is that this isn’t the team’s first, second or third bad loss this season.
There have already been more than a few inexcusable losses. Included on that list are a Dec. 5 road loss to a Memphis Grizzlies team missing four starters, a Dec. 6 home loss to the struggling Detroit Pistons and a Dec. 10 home loss to the rebuilding San Antonio Spurs.
Why do these type of losses keep happening?
“Hell if I know,” Butler said when asked that question. “We just don’t guard nobody. We don’t pass the ball. It’s tough. I think everybody just has — it’s not their own agenda — but everybody wants to make sure that we win. And we’re a team that everybody has to be together, everybody needs the rock in order to be successful. That’s how we won in the past, that’s how we’re going to win now and probably how we’re going to end up winning in the future.”
Lowry offered a theory behind the Heat’s bad losses this season.
“Concentration, I guess. Maybe that’s one one thing,” Lowry said. “We got to stay locked into what we’re doing and understanding every situation, we got to take advantage of it. We got to try to continue to build and know what our end goal is, which we all do. We’re all on the same page. We just can’t have the lack-of-concentration games and not playing up to the level we know how to play to.”
Because of the Heat’s inability to string together long winning stretches, it has played 39 games and has yet to be better than two games above .500. Miami reached this point last season with a 24-15 record on its way to finishing the regular season with the Eastern Conference’s top record.
Injuries could explain some of the Heat’s setbacks this season. Miami entered Thursday with the second-most missed games in the NBA (151 missed games) this season due to injury, according to Spotrac.
Wednesday was just one loss, but the problem is it’s the continuation of a concerning trend. The Heat, which entered Thursday in eighth place in the East, is just 9-7 against sub-.500 teams this season after recording a 25-9 record against losing teams last season.
“We can’t afford to fall apart knowing how good of a team we are,” Butler said. “We just got to figure this thing out and hope that whenever we start winning, they come in bunches. Win nine, 10 or 11 in a row because it’s very possible. There are teams that do it and there’s a team that’s doing it right now. So hopefully we’re that next team.”
