With six weeks left in regular season, Heat returns from break with plenty to figure out
The Miami Heat has a lot to figure out over the final six weeks of the regular season.
That work began again when the Heat held its first post-All-Star break practice on Thursday at Miami-Dade Arena before resuming its schedule on Friday against the Milwaukee Bucks at Fiserv Forum (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and ESPN).
With 23 games left on its regular-season schedule, the Heat must figure out how to use new additions Kevin Love and Cody Zeller, determine who will be its starting point guard, solve its offensive struggles and find positive backup center minutes, among other things in a short amount of time all while making sure it qualifies for the playoffs.
The Heat entered Thursday in seventh place in the Eastern Conference standings with a 32-27 record. Miami holds the NBA’s 26th-ranked offensive rating, fifth-ranked defensive rating and 20th-ranked net rating.
“You’re going to get everybody’s focus and energy and effort for that 23-game sprint,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “For us, it’s a 23-game sprint after the break. I think it’s fun.”
Here are eight things on the Heat’s to-do list over the final weeks of the regular season:
Get Love and Zeller acclimated quickly: This marks the first time in Love’s 15-year NBA career that he has switched teams in the middle of the season and it’s also the first time Zeller has joined a new team in the middle of the season during his 10-year NBA career. Making the situation even more challenging is the fact that Love hasn’t played in a game since Jan. 24 after falling out of the Cleveland Cavaliers’ rotation and Zeller hasn’t played in a regular-season game since Jan. 10, 2022 after a knee injury cut his year short last season. Will Love start at power forward? Will Zeller become the Heat’s new backup center? This all needs to be worked out quickly.
Become a more efficient three-point shooting team: The Heat entered the All-Star break ranked 28th in team three-point percentage at 33.4 percent this season. Miami closed last regular season as the NBA’s top three-point shooting team at 37.9 percent. Using this season’s volume of 2,054 three-point attempts, the Heat’s offensive rating would jump from fifth-worst to sixth-best in the NBA if it replicated its league-best team three-point percentage of 37.9 percent from last regular season.
Stay relatively healthy: While the Heat’s top players like Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro have been able to avoid major injuries, there have been so many players on the roster who have needed to miss chunks of time. That has led to injury issues becoming one of the biggest storylines of Miami’s season. The Heat entered Thursday with the most missed games in the NBA (246 missed games) this season due to injury, according to Spotrac.
Get positive minutes out of a backup center: Some of the Heat’s losses this season have come because of its inability to survive the non-Adebayo minutes. Miami has been outscored by six points per 100 possessions when Adebayo, its starting center, has been off the court this season. Undrafted rookie Orlando Robinson has played as the Heat’s backup center for the last month-plus, but he has challengers for that role with second-year center Omer Yurtseven soon expected to make his season debut after November ankle surgery and the recent acquisitions of Zeller, a veteran center, and Love, a potential small-ball center. Plus, Robinson’s NBA availability is limited to just four more games this regular season as part of restrictions tied to his two-way contract.
Settle on a starting point guard: Starting is overrated. Who closes games is more telling. But the Heat still needs to decide between Kyle Lowry and Gabe Vincent to be its starting point guard. Lowry missed the six games leading into the All-Star break because of lingering left knee soreness, with Vincent starting in each of those games. There’s hope that Lowry will be able to return shortly after the break, which will force the Heat to make a decision on whether to insert Lowry back into the starting lineup or stick with Vincent. Or Miami could go a different direction and opt against starting a traditional point guard, instead finding a way to get both Caleb Martin and Love into the starting lineup with Herro playing as the lead guard.
Generate a more efficient shot chart: The Heat has attempted more shots from midrange than three-point range in 10 of its last 17 games. This happened in just nine of the Heat’s first 42 games of the season. With midrange shots considered less efficient than three-point attempts, the Heat’s location effective field-goal percentage (if a team shot league average from each location based on its shot chart) is ranked third-worst in the NBA since the start of January, according to Cleaning the Glass. While the Heat hasn’t been a good three-point shooting team this season, relying on midrange looks to save the offense (even with Adebayo, Butler and Herro thriving in that area) doesn’t seem to be the solution.
Take advantage of lesser opponents: The Heat’s remaining schedule isn’t easy, with 12 of its final 23 games coming against teams currently with winning records. But there are some very winnable games mixed in there, as it has five games left against teams with one of the league’s bottom-five records (one vs. Charlotte Hornets, two vs. Orlando Magic and two vs. Detroit Pistons). With the race to avoid the play-in tournament so close, the Heat can’t afford to waste those opportunities against lesser opponents. The problem is the Heat has already been guilty of that with nine losses against sub-.500 teams this season.
Avoid the play-in tournament: Other than missing the playoffs entirely, having to take part in the play-in tournament just to qualify for the playoffs is the worst-case scenario for the Heat. The play-in tournament, which is done during the week-long window between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, features the seventh through 10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference. The Heat’s reward for advancing past the play-in tournament would be an ultra-challenging first-round playoff matchup against one of the top two seeds in the East, which is currently the No. 1 Boston Celtics and No. 2 Bucks.
