Heat enters All-Star break on two-game skid and No. 7 in East. Takeaways from loss to Nets
.JPG "Brooklyn Nets forward Mikal Bridges (1) drives against Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler (22) as Miami Heat forward Duncan Robinson watches during the second half of an NBA basketball game Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, in New York.")
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 116-105 loss to the Brooklyn Nets (34-24) on Wednesday night at Barclays Center. The Heat (32-27) now enters the All-Star break and has more than a week off before reconvening for practice in Miami on Feb. 23 and then resuming its schedule on Feb. 24 against the Bucks in Milwaukee:
This was definitely not the way the Heat wanted to enter the break, with a loss in Brooklyn that dropped Miami to a play-in tournament seed.
The Heat enters the break on a two-game skid after winning 20 of its previous 30 games following a rough 12-15 start to the season.
With the New York Knicks defeating the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday, the Heat fell from sixth place to seventh place in the Eastern Conference standings. If the regular season ended now, the Heat would be in the play-in tournament that features the seventh through 10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.
The seventh-place Heat stands one-half game behind the sixth-place Knicks. The fifth-place Nets extended their lead over the Heat to 2.5 games with Wednesday’s result.
“This was a tough one tonight,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Both sides knew what the context of this game was. We came in with the right preparation, the right mindset. The guys really brought a competitive disposition and we got outplayed in the fourth quarter.”
It was a close game for most of the night, as the first half included seven lead changes and seven ties. The Heat entered halftime with a 56-52 lead.
That back-and-forth theme continued in a third quarter, which closed with the Nets ahead by three points.
The Nets then took control.
After the Heat pulled ahead by one point with 11 minutes to play, the Nets went on a 20-9 run to build a 10-point lead with 4:56 left. Brooklyn extended its lead to as many as 14 points in the final minutes.
“I just remember being up 84-83 and then from that point, it was kind of an avalanche in their favor,” Spoelstra said.
The Nets won the fourth quarter 33-25 to come away with the win. Brooklyn’s offense exploded, shooting 68.4 percent from the field and 6 of 8 on threes with zero turnovers in the final period to break open the game.
Mikal Bridges, who was acquired by the Nets from the Phoenix Suns in last week’s Kevin Durant trade, was the catalyst with a career-high 45 points on 17-of-24 shooting from the field and 4-of-6 shooting from three-point range. Bridges totaled 17 points in the fourth quarter.
The Heat’s usually strong defense had trouble against the new-look Nets, which swapped out stars Kyrie Irving and Durant in trades earlier this month for players like Cameron Johnson, Dorian Finney-Smith, Spencer Dinwiddie and Bridges.
The Nets shot 53.2 percent from the field and 17 of 39 (43.6 percent) from three-point range in the win to record an offensive rating of 128.9 points scored per 100 possessions. It went down as the Heat’s second-worst single-game defensive rating of the season.
“Just getting stops,” Jimmy Butler said of what the Heat didn’t do in Wednesday’s loss. “[Bridges] was hitting some shots, though. That’s what happens whenever you see the ball go in early. You make everything. But he’s a hell of a player. He’s been that way since he entered the league and I think they got a good crew.”
To make matters worse, the Heat’s season-long three-point struggles continued as it shot just 8 of 28 (28.6 percent) from beyond the arc in the loss. The Nets outscored the Heat 51-24 from three-point range.
“Their switching took us out of a lot of open threes,” Spoelstra said. “It wasn’t like we generated a ton of them. The switching also got us into some over-dribbling, over-holding. We weren’t really creating any kind of advantages from that and we’re used to doing that to other teams.”
Bam Adebayo, who is days away from playing in his second NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, led the Heat with a team-high 24 points on 10-of-19 shooting from the field, 13 rebounds and six assists.
But Adebayo’s co-star Butler was quiet with just 13 points on 4-of-11 shooting from the field and 5-of-5 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds and six assists in 32 minutes. He scored only two points and did not attempt a field goal in the fourth quarter.
Wednesday marked just the Heat’s seventh double-digit loss of the season and only its second since the start of 2023.
After missing more than a month of games, Duncan Robinson was back in the Heat’s mix.
Robinson made his return to finish Wednesday’s loss with six points on 2-of-7 shooting from deep in 23 minutes. He missed the previous 20 games after undergoing finger surgery on his shooting hand on Jan. 4.
“That was probably one of the highlights of tonight,” Spoelstra said of Robinson’s return. “He really pushed to get back out there. I think that will help him after the break, as well.”
Robinson, who is in the second season of a five-year, $90 million contract he signed with the Heat in the 2021 offseason, became the new franchise leader for the most career three-pointers made by a Heat player earlier this season.
For a Heat team that has been among the NBA’s worst from three-point range, injecting Robinson’s outside shooting back into the rotation should help. Miami entered Wednesday with the league’s third-worst team three-point percentage this season at 33.5 percent.
But there’s no guarantee that Robinson will have a consistent spot in the Heat’s rotation moving forward, especially when some of the team’s injured players return.
Robinson has been in and out of the bench rotation this season, with Spoelstra opting to play better defenders over him at times.
Robinson is averaging 6.9 points on 32.9 percent shooting from three-point range in 29 games (zero starts) this season. That’s below his usual high standards, as he entered this season shooting 40.6 percent on threes in his first four NBA seasons and set a Heat record for threes made (270) in a single season in 2019-20.
But the Heat was again without starting guard Tyler Herro. The hope is that he’ll still be able to participate in Saturday’s Three-Point Contest at All-Star Weekend.
Herro missed his second straight game because of a left knee contusion in Wednesday’s loss. With the Heat heading into the All-Star break, he’ll now have more than a week to allow the bruise to heal before the team’s schedule resumes.
But Herro is one of the eight players set to take part in the Three-Point Contest on Saturday in Salt Lake City. Despite the injury, the plan remains for Herro to compete in the shooting competition as he tries to become the fifth different Heat player to win the competition.
“You’re not burning many calories on that and you’re certainly not colliding or jumping or doing anything,” Spoelstra said when asked if the Heat is concerned about Herro taking part in the event while recovering from a knee contusion. “He is making progress. He definitely was not ready to be able to play in an NBA game tonight and then we’ll just see how he feels the next two days with his treatment, whether he’ll be able to do that. But I know that he really wants to.”
Herro has missed 14 of Miami’s fist 59 games this season.
Along with Herro, the Heat also remained without Nikola Jovic (lower back stress reaction), Kyle Lowry (left knee soreness), Victor Oladipo (right ankle sprain) and Omer Yurtseven (left ankle surgery) on Wednesday against the Nets. Miami could get most of those players back shortly after the All-Star break.
With Lowry again out, Gabe Vincent continued to take on a bigger role as the Heat’s starting point guard.
In his sixth straight start for the injured Lowry, Vincent closed Wednesday’s loss with 21 points on 6-of-14 shooting from the field, 3-of-9 shooting on threes and 6-of-7 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds, one assist, one steal and zero turnovers in 35 minutes. He has scored double-digit points in four of those six games.
More importantly, the Heat has outscored opponents by 3.8 points per 100 possessions with Vincent on the court during that six-game span.
Will Vincent return to a bench role when/if Lowry can come back from his knee injury this season?
Lowry is expected to miss the remaining games in February and likely some time beyond that in the middle of one of the worst seasons of his NBA career. There’s also the possibility the Heat fills one of its two open roster spots by signing a veteran guard who could challenge for the starting role.
This is Vincent’s opportunity to prove he deserves to be the starter moving forward.
In his six starts for Lowry during this stretch, Vincent has averaged 11.5 points on 36.1 percent shooting from the field and 31.8 percent shooting on threes, three rebounds, three assists and 1.7 steals per game. The shooting efficiency continues to be underwhelming for Vincent, who is shooting 39.9 percent from the field and 32.9 percent from three-point range this season.
Guard Jamaree Bouyea played extended minutes off the bench, as the short-handed Heat again went with an all-undrafted bench rotation.
The Heat used a bench rotation that included four undrafted players: Orlando Robinson, Haywood Highsmith, Duncan Robinson and Bouyea. Miami’s reserves were outscored 38-16.
In the final game of Bouyea’s 10-day contract with the Heat, he closed with three points, three rebounds and one assist in 13 minutes. It marked the fourth straight game that he appeared in, and he logged double-digit minutes in three of those games because of Miami’s injury issues.
Bouyea’s 10-day deal expires Friday during the All-Star break, which means the Heat will either need to sign him to a second 10-day deal or find a more permanent spot for him on the roster to keep him around following the break. Players can be signed for up to two 10-day contracts before they must either be signed for the remainder of the season or be waived.
The 23-year-old Bouyea went undrafted out of San Francisco last year. Besides this 10-day contract with the Heat, he has spent his rookie season with the Heat’s G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce.
This story was originally published February 15, 2023 at 9:56 PM.
