Heat reaches midway point with middling 21-20 record. But is there reason for optimism?
At the midway point of the regular season, the Miami Heat holds the record of an average team. But Heat coaches and players believe their record doesn’t tell the whole story.
Within the organization, the feeling is the team’s play has been trending in a more positive direction for the last few weeks even as it arrived to the midway point of the season at 21-20 following Sunday night’s crushing 102-101 home loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
“I feel something, that it’s been happening for the last three weeks or so,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the Heat opening the second half the regular season Tuesday against the Oklahoma City Thunder at FTX Arena (7:30 p.m., TNT). “Now we have to translate that into wins at some point. But I feel much better about our identity and how we’re playing with both units. We’re getting a lot more consistent play and you can see that it’s real.”
The results have certainly been more positive lately. Even after Sunday’s loss to the red-hot Nets, the Heat has won nine of its last 14 games following a 12-15 start to the season.
But the process to get there has left plenty of room for improvement, especially on the offensive end.
The Heat entered Monday with the NBA’s 24th-ranked offensive rating and eighth-ranked defensive rating this season. The offense remained an issue during its 9-5 stretch to close the first half of the schedule, as it posted the NBA’s 20th-best offensive rating and second-best defensive rating in the last 14 games.
“I think we’re kind of understanding what we need to do to win games,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said. “I think we’ve had a couple bad bounces here and there, but we got to just continue to get better on both ends of the floor. Defensively and offensively, we got to just continue to get better. We’re at the halfway point of the season, now we got to find a way to string some wins together and kind of just continue to build.”
The first half of the Heat’s season has been filled with injuries and close games, which have contributed to its middling record.
The Heat entered Monday with the second-most missed games in the NBA (161 missed games) this season due to injury, according to Spotrac. And a new injury issue surfaced when starting center Bam Adebayo couldn’t finish Sunday’s loss to the Nets because of a right wrist injury.
Those injuries have limited the Heat’s preferred starting lineup of Lowry, Tyler Herro, Butler, Caleb Martin and Adebayo to opening just 14 games so far this season.
The Heat also entered Monday with a league-leading 28 clutch games (one that has a margin of five points or fewer inside the final five minutes of the fourth quarter) played this season. As a result of all the close games, the Heat is on pace to finish with just 10 double-digit wins this season compared to the 31 double-digit victories it recorded last regular season.
“Our record is what it is,” Adebayo said. “I do feel like we’re getting to that point where it’s more winning streaks than losing streaks. I feel like everybody is getting to the point where everybody knows where they’re supposed to be.
“I feel like once we get fully health, the rotation will be known and we can get to the point where instead of being in these close game, it would be seven to 10-point leads and we walk off with a win.”
But as the second half of the schedule begins, time is no longer on the Heat’s side. Healthy or not, the time for Miami to make a run up the Eastern Conference standings is now and that will be challenging considering 10 of its next 14 games come against teams that currently hold winning records.
After finishing last regular season as the East’s top playoff seed, the Heat is in play-in tournament territory this season. Miami entered Monday in eighth place in the East standings.
“We’re good,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said confidently. “We enjoy being around one another. I know that we’re going to figure it out. It’s only a matter of time. But this is a step in the right direction. Even though we did not win [Sunday against the Nets], I think we can learn from it and we will be better moving forward. It’s a new year. We’re getting guys back healthy. We’re going to be straight.”
With the NBA’s Feb. 9 trade deadline still a month away, the Heat could add outside reinforcement in the coming weeks to improve the roster. Or Miami could just get healthy and have its preferred starting lineup available for a sustained stretch for the first time this season.
Whatever happens, the Heat knows it needs a long winning stretch to get to where it wants to be in the standings ahead of the playoffs. Spoelstra pointed to Sunday’s opponent, the Nets, as an example of what’s possible as a team that started 9-11 before winning 18 of its last 20 games to turn around its season.
“Look, we don’t have to look any further than the team over there,” Spoelstra said following Sunday’s loss to Brooklyn. “It was a seven-week stretch that they’ve really turned it on and they went from 9-11 to basically a game away from being at the top of the conference. So things can happen quickly in this conference because it is so competitive and everybody is bunched up. You have to put together weeks of good basketball. I think we’re starting to do that and then the next challenge will be to do it consistently and for it to translate into wins.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2023 at 10:14 AM.
