Duncan Robinson returns to Miami to see back specialist, as injuries continue to mount for Heat
Injuries have been one of the Miami Heat’s issues throughout the season. But injuries are probably the Heat’s biggest issue in the final weeks of the regular season as it fights to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.
The Heat entered Monday night’s 98-91 loss without a chunk of its usual rotation, as Jimmy Butler (right foot contusion), Nikola Jovic (strained right hamstring), Tyler Herro (right foot medial tendintis), Kevin Love (right heel bruise) and Josh Richardson (right shoulder surgery) all missed the game.
Now, Duncan Robinson has left the Heat to return to Miami to see a back specialist after exiting Monday’s game early with back discomfort. Robinson is out for Wednesday’s matchup against the Cavaliers in Cleveland (7 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) — the Heat’s final stop on its four-game trip — and potentially longer.
Meanwhile, Butler and Jovic are questionable for Wednesday’s game against the Cavaliers. Herro, Love and Richardson remain out.
The Heat also has Bam Adebayo playing through a lower back contusion and Caleb Martin playing through a sprained left thumb.
Due to that long list of injuries, Cole Swider rejoined the Heat from the G League on Tuesday. In addition, Orlando Robinson and Alondes Williams are expected to rejoin the Heat in time for Wednesday’s game in Cleveland.
“We always feel like we have enough regardless of who’s in the lineup,” Robinson said following Monday’s loss before heading back to Miami. “But, obviously, we haven’t been full strength for a while.”
The Heat opened the trip by defeating the Detroit Pistons on Friday despite missing Herro, Love and Richardson.
The Heat continued its trip with another win against the Pistons on Sunday, this time without Butler, Jovic, Herro, Love and Richardson.
But the Heat couldn’t overcome those five absences again Monday against the 76ers, especially with Robinson clearly not himself in the 24 minutes he played before leaving the game early with back discomfort. Miami scored just 42 second-half points in the loss with so much offensive firepower missing.
“This is definitely not a group that’s going to be making any excuses about that,” Robinson said. “Guys are playing through being banged up and that’s just part of what it is this time of year. Obviously, we’re hoping and eager to get everybody back and fully healthy.”
After scoring a season-high 30 points and becoming the fastest player in NBA history to make 1,000 career threes on the front end of the road back-to-back Sunday in Detroit, Robinson entered Monday’s game on the back end of the back-to-back in Philadelphia already limited by his back issue.
“He couldn’t move coming into the game,” Spoelstra said. “Just the workload, everything last night, the flight or whatever. He just couldn’t move. But he’s a competitor and he was like whatever we need, I’ll be out there. It was tough.”
Robinson, who has missed just five games because of injuries this season, was clearly bothered by his back during Monday’s game. He finished with only three points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field and 0-of-1 shooting from three-point range before exiting the game early.
“They were playing him physical,” Spoelstra said. “[Nicolas] Batum was being really physical on his off-ball movement. Anybody that has had back spasms, if you can’t move and cut and feel like you can be yourself, it’s a tough thing to manage. He’s a big part our offense, as we know. Just the space, the shooting, the movement, the overreactions. Even when he was in there, it was a fraction of what he could normally do just in terms of how he can move defenses around.”
Robinson noted that he has been dealing with back discomfort “over this last stretch,” but it flared up during the second half of Sunday’s win over the Pistons.
“I just wanted to try to give it a chance,” Robinson said of his decision to play Monday against the 76ers despite the pain. “Unfortunately, I probably was more of a detriment than anything, which is disappointing. But, yeah, at a certain point, we just made a judgment call that I probably wasn’t going to help.”
Unfortunately for the Heat, this is just the continuation of a season-long trend.
The Heat entered Tuesday with the fourth-most missed games in the league this season due to injuries at 231 games, according to Spotrac’s injury tracker. The only teams with more missed games because of injuries this season are three of the NBA’s worst teams — the Memphis Grizzlies (428 missed games), Portland Trail Blazers (250 games) and Charlotte Hornets (243 games).
Those injuries have forced the Heat to set a new franchise record by using 32 different starting lineups this season.
Those injuries are also one of the biggest reasons why the Heat finds itself in play-in tournament territory for the second straight season, sitting in eighth place in the Eastern Conference with 14 regular-season games left to play. The Heat has a comfortable 3.5-game lead over the ninth-place Chicago Bulls, but is one-half game behind the seventh-place Indiana Pacers and one game behind the sixth-place 76ers.
The Heat needs to finish with a top-six seed in the East to avoid the play-in tourney, which features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.
“We’re just trying to build a consistency to our identity and an ability to sustain that, and just keep on fighting through this regular season,” Spoelstra said. “These are opportunities to get better. The adversity can make you better if you handle it the right way.”
Getting some players back from injury would also help make the Heat better.
“No, because you can’t dictate injuries,” Adebayo said when asked if he’s tired of all the moving parts. “You can’t tell guys to play through some injuries that are obviously really bothering them — me included. For us, it’s next man up always. We’ve won games with eight guys before. So when you got guys out, you still have a chance.”
But Adebayo also admits he’s looking forward to the day the Heat’s roster is again close to full health, with the start of the playoffs approaching.
“It’s going to be a dope experience just for all of us to be healthy again, all of us be out together and all of us try to figure out how we can get wins and make a deep playoff run,” Adebayo said, with the core of this same Heat team advancing to the NBA Finals last season before losing to the Denver Nuggets in the championship series.
But time is running out for the Heat to get healthy this season, and the injuries continue to mount.
This story was originally published March 19, 2024 at 10:25 AM.
