Takeaways and details from Heat’s much-needed win over 76ers to snap losing skid
.JPG "Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler, right, goes up for a shot against Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Monday, Feb. 27, 2023, in Philadelphia.")
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 101-99 win over the the Philadelphia 76ers (39-21) on Monday night at Wells Fargo Center to snap a four-game losing skid. The Heat (33-29) closed its three-game trip at 1-2 and now returns to Miami to open a season-long six-game homstand on Wednesday with another matchup against the 76ers:
Following Saturday’s loss in Charlotte, a frustrated Jimmy Butler made it clear he was “tired of losing.” So Butler turned his play up a notch and led the Heat to a much-needed win.
“It was just one of these deals that you have to show some grit,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after Monday’s victory. “Things don’t always go your way in this league. It’s about how you respond to those moments, collectively, when you have some disappointments. And the guys were disappointed — we were all disappointed about the last two games. Four games, really. And at some point, you just have to take a stand and figure it out and gut out a win.”
Butler was sensational, finishing Monday’s win with 23 points, 11 rebounds (four offensive rebounds), nine assists and four steals in 32 minutes. He fell just short of completing the 19th triple-double of his NBA career.
“All over the place,” Spoelstra said of Butler’s impact. “He really did. His activity on the weak side, defensively. He broke up a lot of plays. Now the steals, everybody recognizes that. He broke up, probably a dozen more plays where there’s windows of opportunity or guys were open.”
Butler’s big game made up for cold shooting nights from co-stars Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. Adebayo finished with 13 points on 4-of-14 shooting from the field and Herro closed with eight points on 3-of-13 shooting from the field and 2-of-9 shooting on threes.
An active and engaged Butler set the tone from the start, with seven points, four rebounds (three offensive rebounds), five assists and one steal in his 10-minute first-quarter stint.
Powered by Butler’s excellence, the Heat led a quality 76ers team that holds third-best record in the Eastern Conference for most of the night.
The Heat ended the first quarter with a six-point lead and entered halftime ahead by eight points.
The 76ers pulled within one point with 3:44 left in the third quarter, but the Heat responded by going on a 22-12 run to push its lead back up to 11 with 7:10 left in the fourth quarter.
The game still came down to the final minutes, as the 76ers answered with a 16-4 run of their own to take their first lead since early in the first quarter at 99-98 with 1:41 remaining.
But Butler then took over to make sure the Heat escaped with the win, converting a wild reverse layup around two 76ers defenders to put Miami back ahead by one point with 1:28 to play.
After a few Heat defensive stops, including Adebayo’s huge block on a jumper from 76ers center Joel Embiid with 29.4 seconds to play, Butler was fouled by 76ers guard James Harden on a turnaround jumper with 9.2 seconds left. Butler made one of the two free throws to extend Miami’s lead to two points.
With 8.4 seconds on the clock after a timeout, the 76ers had one final possession to go for the tie or go for the win. Philadelphia went for the win, but Harden’s three-point attempt bounced off the back of the rim as the final buzzer sounded to clinch the two-point win for Miami.
“You have to expect things to be a little bit gnarly on the road,” Spoelstra said. “But you have to weather a bunch of different storms. I thought we weathered storms throughout the course of the game well. ...
“And then sometimes also, you just need the ball to bounce the right way. Harden had a window where he was open there at the end. But there’s a karma to it. I thought we really competed and contested so many of their shots that when you do get an open shot, you’re not necessarily in great rhythm.”
Monday went down as the Heat’s league-leading 43nd clutch game (one that has a margin of five points or fewer inside the final five minutes of the fourth quarter) of the season. Miami improved to 24-19 in such situations.
The Heat has played in an NBA-high 34 games decided by five points or less this season.
The NBA’s all-time team record for the most games decided by five points or less during a single season is 41 by the Denver Nuggets in 1977-78. With 34 such games through the first 62 games of the schedule, the Heat is on track to finish with 44 games decided by five points or less to set a new league record this season.
The Heat also won because it finally hit a high percentage of its three-point attempts.
The Heat has essentially been in a season-long three-point shooting slump, entering Monday with the NBA’s third-worst team three-point percentage at 33.1 percent after finishing last regular season as the league’s most efficient three-point shooting team (37.9 percent).
During its four-game skid, the Heat shot 40 of 139 (28.8 percent) from beyond the arc. That includes an alarming 15 of 59 (25.4 percent) shooting on wide open threes (when the closest defender is six or more feet away), according to NBA tracking stats.
But along with snapping its losing streak, the Heat also broke out of its shooting slump on Monday — for one game, at least.
The Heat shot 15 of 37 (40.5 percent) from three-point range in Monday’s win. It marked the most threes Miami has made in a game since hitting 15 threes in a Dec. 20 loss to the Chicago Bulls.
“It was good. I think we look a lot better whenever we make threes,” Butler said. “But we got some stops. We got out in transition and won. No matter how we do it, we got one on the road here in Philly and that’s all we want.”
Gabe Vincent made a team-high four threes on eight attempts to finish with 14 points. He shot 1 of 9 from three-point range in the previous two games.
Max Strus and Victor Oladipo each hit three three-pointers for the Heat.
Strus finished with 13 points on 3-of-8 shooting from deep. He shot 1 of 7 from beyond the arc in the previous two games.
Oladipo finished with 11 points on 3-of-5 shooting on threes. He shot 0 of 7 from three-point range in the previous two games.
“It’s huge for all of us,” Strus said of the Heat’s one-game three-point resurgence. “It’s not just one person. It’s been a team thing. So we’ve all been sticking with each other and telling each other that we got each other’s backs. So it was definitely good to see a couple go down. Hopefully that propels forward and we just pick up where we left off next game.”
Monday marked just the eighth time the Heat has shot 40 percent or better on threes this season. The Heat shot 40 percent or better from beyond the arc in 31 games last regular season.
The Heat has not used much zone defense recently, but leaned on it for extended stretches against the 76ers and it changed the game.
The last time the Heat used its 2-3 zone look for double-digit possessions in a game was in a Feb. 4 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. In fact, Miami used zone on a total of 38 defensive possessions in its previous seven games.
But the Heat brought out the zone Monday, especially when its bench unit was on the court with Caleb Martin and Oladipo at the top of it. Miami used zone for 25 defensive possessions against Philadelphia’s top-10 offense.
The Heat stuck with the look for extended stretches for good reason, as the 76ers scored just 0.64 points per possession against Miami’s zone defense compared to 1.09 points per possession against Miami’s man-to-man defense.
In the end, the 76ers scored just 99 points on 43.8 percent shooting from the field and 10-of-28 (35.7 percent) shooting from three-point range while committing 20 turnovers that the Heat scored 22 points on. And in the fourth quarter, Philadelphia was limited to 19 points on 5-of-24 (20.8 percent) shooting from the field and 1-of-10 (10 percent) shooting on threes.
The 76ers also threw a lot of zone at the Heat’s offense on Monday.
“This probably felt like a Syracuse game. Both teams were playing a lot of zone,” Spoelstra said.
Embiid totaled a team-high 27 points and 12 rebounds but committed six turnovers. Harden scored 20 points on 14 shots and dished out 12 assists to four turnovers.
Although it has not been used much lately, the Heat has used its zone defense at a historic rate this season. Miami has already set a new modern-day NBA record for the most zone possessions played in a season.
The Heat’s new starting lineup again did not produce positive results, but the bench did.
The Heat went with the starting lineup of Vincent, Herro, Butler, Kevin Love and Adebayo for the third straight game on Monday. And for the third straight game, the group’s minutes were a net-negative.
The Heat was outscored by four points in 13 minutes with its new starting starting lineup on the court in Philadelphia.
Love, who replaced Martin in the starting lineup after signing with the Heat during the All-Star break, closed Monday’s win with eight points, five rebounds and two assists in 21 minutes.
The Heat’s new starting lineup has now been outscored by a total of 22 points in 45 minutes together and by 19.5 points per 100 possessions in their first three games together.
But the Heat’s bench rotation of Strus, Oladipo, Cody Zeller and Martin helped make up for the starting lineup’s struggles on Monday. After combining for just 10 points in Saturday’s loss to the Hornets, the Heat’s reserves combined for 35 points against the 76ers and each of them finished with a positive plus/minus.
“It was huge,” Strus said of those bench contributions. “I think a lot of guys stepped up and played their minutes hard and just tried to give more to the team. I think we’re all happy with the efforts we made and obviously it resulted in a win.”
Duncan Robinson, who played as the fifth reserve in each of the previous two games, did not appear in Monday’s game.
The win kept the Heat from again losing ground in the playoff race.
With the New York Knicks defeating the Boston Celtics on Monday, the Knicks moved past the Brooklyn Nets for fifth place in the Eastern Conference standings.
The Heat stands two games behind the sixth-place Nets (34-26) and 2.5 games behind the fifth-place Knicks (36-27) with 20 games left on its regular-season schedule. Miami is also 1.5 games ahead of the eighth-place Atlanta Hawks (31-30).
Finishing with a top-six playoff seed is important because it would keep the Heat out of the dreaded play-in tournament. 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.
This story was originally published February 27, 2023 at 9:34 PM.
