Heat defense struggles, not enough threes fall. Takeaways from bad loss to Hornets to open trip
.JPG "Charlotte Hornets forward P.J. Washington (25) dunks as Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo (13) looks on during the first half of an NBA basketball game in Charlotte, N.C., Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023.")
The Miami Heat’s best stretch of the season has been defined by its ability to take care of business against inferior and short-handed teams.
But the Heat (28-23) couldn’t keep it going on Sunday afternoon, falling to the struggling Charlotte Hornets 122-117 at Spectrum Center to kick off an important four-game trip. The Hornets (15-36) entered the game tied with the San Antonio Spurs for the NBA’s third-worst record.
Sunday marked just the Heat’s eight loss in the last 24 games after a rough 12-15 start to the season.
“It’s tough in this league to strive to be great and to commit to that requires a big time collective commitment and that leads to consistency,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said following the defeat. “These are tough lessons for our ball club. I see a path for our team to be great, but it’s going to require much more consistency night in and night out to develop that reliability.”
The Heat looked to be on its way to another win, pulling ahead by 13 points with 8:32 left in the third quarter.
“What happened after that was not great,” Spoelstra said.
That’s when the Hornets swung the momentum to their side, closing the third quarter with a huge 32-14 run to end the period ahead of the Heat 91-86.
The Hornets continued their run by beginning the fourth quarter on a 17-10 spurt to extend their lead to 12 points with 5:54 to play.
The Heat then responded with a run of its own, scoring 10 quick unanswered points to cut the deficit to two with 3:51 left.
That was the closest the Heat got, as the Hornets came back to score the next six points to push their lead back up to eight with 1:51 to remaining and put the game away.
“We let them get in the flow,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “When you have them down 10, that’s when we’re supposed to go for the kill in a sense and just put them away. But we coasted around and let them get back in the game and they got in a rhythm.”
The Heat’s defense has been among the NBA’s best this season, but struggled against a Hornets team that entered with the league’s worst offensive rating.
Charlotte totaled 122 points while shooting an efficient 54.2 percent from the field, including 15 of 40 (37.5 percent) from three-point range, despite committing 19 turnovers.
The Hornets were led by guard Terry Rozier, who finished with a game-high 31 points, to go with six rebounds and seven assists.. He was one of three players on Charlotte’s roster who scored 20 or more points on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Adebayo (17 points, four rebounds and six assists), Jimmy Butler (28 points, seven rebounds and two assists) and Tyler Herro (24 points, five rebounds and three assists) combined for 69 points on 56 percent shooting from the field. The rest of the Heat’s roster scored 48 points on 39.5 percent shooting from the field.
The Heat continues the trip on Tuesday against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Hornets on Sunday:
Aside from forcing turnovers, the Heat’s defense didn’t do much else good.
The Heat entered Sunday with the NBA’s second-highest opponent turnover rate (percentage of opponent possessions that end in a turnover) at 17 percent this season. As a result, the Heat has scored an average of 18.9 points per game off turnovers this season, which is the sixth-most in the league.
The Heat’s defense again checked those boxes, forcing the Hornets into a turnover on 19 percent of their possessions. Miami scored 25 points on Charlotte’s 19 turnovers.
The problem is the Heat’s defense didn’t have much success on the possessions that didn’t end with a Hornets turnover.
Despite the Hornets’ turnover issues, they scored 122 points per 100 possessions on Sunday for an offensive rating that would rank first in the NBA among teams for the season.
It didn’t help that the Hornets also finished with 25 fast-break points, which is the third-most the Heat has allowed in a game this season.
Charlotte’s offense was especially sharp in the second half, scoring 64 points while shooting 57.1 percent from the field and 9 of 18 (50 percent) on threes in the final two quarters on the way to the win. The Hornets won the second half 64-55.
“We didn’t guard nobody,” Butler said. “It wasn’t just in the fourth quarter. We didn’t guard nobody all game and then they started getting some easy ones and then all the tough ones started going in. That’s the way the basketball universe works.”
Sunday’s result on this end of the court was surprising, considering the Heat entered with the NBA’s fourth-best defensive rating and the Hornets entered with the NBA’s worst offensive rating this season.
The Heat’s offense put together a strange shot chart against one of the NBA’s worst defenses.
The Heat entered Sunday with the NBA’s fourth-worst offensive rating (scoring 110.8 points per 100 possessions) and the Hornets entered with the NBA’s fourth-worst defensive rating (allowing 115.6 points per 100 possessions) this season.
The Heat actually won the battle between the two struggling units, scoring at an above average rate of 118.2 points per 100 possessions in Sunday’s loss. Miami shot an efficient 48.4 percent from the field.
The issue is the Heat didn’t shoot enough or make enough threes.
The Heat entered with the NBA’s fourth-worst team three-point percentage (33.5 percent) this season.
That percentage didn’t get any better Sunday, when Miami shot 10 of 31 (32.3 percent) from beyond the arc. Only 31 percent of the Heat’s field-goal attempts came from three-point range, which is in the 27th percentile compared to all other NBA games played this season.
The result: The Hornets outscored the Heat 45-30 from behind the three-point line on Sunday.
“You just got to jack them up there,” Butler said of the Heat’s low three-point attempt total in Charlotte. “I think sometimes we’re too unselfish, which is good. But too much of any good thing is a bad thing. So when we get the opportunity, we got to let them fly.”
While the Heat didn’t take many threes, it did put up a lot of midrange shots. Miami finished 21 of 38 (55.3 percent) on midrange attempts against the Hornets.
That means 40 percent of the Heat’s field-goal attempts came from midrange, which is in the 86th percentile compared to all other NBA games played this season.
Sunday marked the 15th game this season that the Heat has attempted more midrange shots than three-point shots, and the sixth time it has happened in the last nine games.
Sunday represented just the 19th time that the Heat’s preferred starting lineup has opened a game together this season.
Injury issues have limited the unit’s availability, but the Heat has been getting to its preferred starting lineup of Kyle Lowry, Herro, Butler, Caleb Martin and Adebayo more consistently recently. This five-man combination has now started in five of the last six games.
When this group has been available, it has been very effective.
This lineup entered Sunday outscoring opponents by 7.4 points per 100 possessions in 250 minutes together this season — a net rating that ranks ninth among the 21 NBA lineups that had logged at least 200 minutes. Usually the most used lineups in the league are some of the most productive.
And even in Sunday’s disappointing loss, the Heat’s preferred starting lineup outscored the Hornets by two points in 14 minutes together.
It’s also worth noting that after Lowry did not play in the fourth quarter of the previous two games, he recorded eight points, two rebounds and two assists in seven fourth-quarter minutes on Sunday.
The Heat left three players in Miami as they continue to recover from their injuries, but one almost made the trip.
Still sidelined, Nikola Jovic (lower back stress reaction), Duncan Robinson (finger surgery) and Omer Yurtseven (ankle surgery) did not travel with the Heat to Charlotte for the start of the trip.
Sunday marked the 14th straight game that Jovic has missed with his lower back issue and the 13th straight game Robinson has missed after undergoing finger surgery. The Heat announced earlier this month that both players would be re-evaluated at the end of January.
Yurtseven has not yet played this season and his return is still weeks away.
“The work that they’re able to do right now is just too significant there,” Spoelstra said of the decision to have Jovic, Robinson and Yurtseven stay in Miami this week. “And they’re not quite ready to take that next step to be ready to play.”
But Spoelstra added that the Heat thought about bringing Robinson along for the four-game trip just so he could be around the team.
“Duncan was really pushing to get on this trip,” Spoelstra said. “We thought about it, because the fellowship is important. But the work that he’s able to do in our facility consistently trumps that and I think it will speed up the process for them to get to that next step, most of all, which we all want.”
In addition to missing Jovic, Robinson and Yurtseven, the Heat was also without two-way contract forward Jamal Cain on Sunday. Cain, who is an undrafted rookie, was sent back to the G League on Saturday to play for the Sioux Falls Skyforce.
As the Heat works to avoid the play-in tournament and continue its rise up the Eastern Conference standings, the trip only gets tougher from here.
Even after Sunday’s loss, the Heat remains in the sixth spot in the East. But Miami is now just one game ahead of the seventh-place New York Knicks and 2.5 games ahead of the eighth-place Atlanta Hawks, which were both idle on Sunday.
Finishing as a top-six team in the East is important because the four teams that end the regular season in seventh through 10th place in each conference need to take part in the play-in tournament just to earn one one of the final two playoff seeds. The Heat has never been part of the play-in tournament since it was instituted in the 2019-20 season.
“There’s a human side of it. There’s a competitive side of it,” Spoelstra said when asked if its too early to be closely monitoring the standings. “So we are starting to at least note the teams that we’re right there with. And having that awareness can give you a healthy perspective. You don’t need to overwhelm yourself of those result thoughts right now. But that’s the part that also makes it a little bit fun.”
The rest of the trip will test the Heat, as it ends with matchups against three East teams with winning records. Miami travels to take on the fifth-place Cavaliers on Tuesday, the seventh-place Knicks on Thursday and the third-place Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday.
“I don’t think it scares us none,” Butler said when asked about the rest of the trip. “I think we play better quote-unquote against the teams that have better records than us.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2023 at 3:36 PM.
