What went wrong for the Heat in Wednesday’s ‘embarrassing’ season-opening loss on Pat Riley night?
What was supposed to be a memorable night for the Miami Heat quickly turned into one that many on the Heat’s side will want to forget.
Following an emotional halftime ceremony to commemorate the start of Pat Riley’s 30th season with the Heat by unveiling “Pat Riley Court at Kaseya Center” on Wednesday, the Magic dominated the Heat to turn a four-point halftime lead into a 28-point advantage nine minutes into the third quarter. For the Heat, the result was an ugly 116-97 home loss to the Magic to begin the regular season.
“We played bad,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said when asked to explain what happened in the second half of Wednesday’s season-opening defeat. “It’s not really anything to that. That’s as simple as I can make it. It’s embarrassing, especially on a night like this for ‘The Godfather’ Riley.”
The 19-point loss to the Magic marked the Heat’s first double-digit loss to open the regular season since falling to the Detroit Pistons 91-80 at the start of the 2007-08 season.
“We didn’t play well at all,” Heat guard Terry Rozier said, with the team returning to practice Friday before traveling to face the Charlotte Hornets on Saturday.
The Heat didn’t play well on either end of the court, especially in that game-deciding third quarter controlled by the Magic. But one of the most alarming aspects of Wednesday’s loss is the Heat’s offense didn’t look much different than the one that finished with a bottom-10 offensive rating in each of the last two seasons.
The Heat made tweaks to its offense during training camp and in the preseason, emphasizing the need for a faster pace (played at the NBA’s second-slowest pace of 96.9 possessions per 48 minutes last regular season) and a more efficient shot profile that includes more threes, attempts at the rim and free throws.
The start of the opener provided some encouraging signs, as the Heat played a bit faster (102 possessions per 48 minutes) and was aggressive enough to generate 18 shots from within the restricted area and 21 free throws in Wednesday’s first half.
But that positive trend ended when an elite Magic defense that finished last regular season with the NBA’s third-best defensive rating tightened up at the start of the second half. In Wednesday’s third quarter, the game slowed to a crawl of 90 possessions per 48 minutes, and the Heat attempted just three shots at the rim and four free throws.
“Offensively, we have to trust some of the things that we’ve been working on in the preseason,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “It has looked a lot different than this. But obviously that’s a very good defense. That’s a top-five defense. They’re very active, long. So you have to trust what we do even more.”
How bad was it? The Heat finished Wednesday’s loss with a dismal offensive rating of 100 points scored per 100 possessions that would have ranked last in the NBA among teams last regular season.
“We would have had to trust our half-court offense a little bit more and some of the other triggers that we’ve been working on to keep the defense honest,” Spoelstra continued. “But we weren’t able to do that and you have to credit them.”
The Heat’s two best players, Adebayo and Jimmy Butler, were part of the problem Wednesday, combining for just 12 points on 2-of-13 (15.4 percent) shooting from the field. They combined to average 40.1 points per game last regular season.
Adebayo finished the loss with nine points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field, 0-of-2 shooting on threes and 7-of-10 shooting from the foul line, five rebounds and one assist in 26 minutes. He generated just one field-goal attempt from inside the paint.
Butler recorded three points on 1-of-8 shooting from the field, 0-of-2 shooting on threes and 1-of-2 shooting from the free-throw line, four rebounds, five assists, one steal and one block in 26 minutes. He shot 1 of 4 from within the restricted area and 1 of 6 from inside the paint while finishing with three or fewer points in a game that he plays at least 25 minutes in for just the fifth time in his NBA career.
“I mean, it was just I was running the offense,” Adebayo said when asked about his quiet performance to begin the regular season. “You fall short of that sometimes, you lose track of the game when you’re trying to do the right thing all the time. I feel like that’s where me and Jimmy got to come together and figure out how we can be aggressive in the new offense.”
The defensive activity that the Heat emphasized this preseason wasn’t there in Wednesday’s third quarter either. After finishing this preseason with the NBA’s highest opponent turnover rate (percentage of opponent possessions that end in a turnover) at 21.7 percent, the Heat finished the third quarter of the regular-season opener with an underwhelming opponent turnover rate of 8.7 percent.
In the end, the Heat came up with just five steals and nine deflections in Wednesday’s loss — down from even last regular season’s averages of 7.5 steals and 13.9 deflections per game.
“The activity level wasn’t there,” Spoelstra said. “You don’t need stats to see it. You can feel it when we’re active. It might not lead to steals, but yeah. What we’ve felt the last three weeks, we didn’t feel that tonight.”
Multiple Heat players pointed to the Heat’s offensive struggles as the catalyst behind its defensive problems in the third quarter.
“We kind of just fell apart in the second half on both sides of the floor,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said. “When the offense started to go in the wrong direction, it felt like our effort, intensity and our attention to detail kind of just went out the window. That can’t happen for a team like us. We want to compete for a championship and that’s not it.”
The Heat brought back most of last season’s roster that needed to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament before being quickly eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics. The hope is that a healthier roster will produce better results this season after an injury-riddled year last season, which led the Heat to set a new franchise record with 35 different starting lineups and limited the Heat’s leading trio of Adebayo, Butler and Herro to just 27 games together.
On Wednesday, Adebayo, Butler and Herro were all available and on the court. But the outcome was not what the Heat was hoping for to start the season.
“For us, it’s short-term memory,” Adebayo said. “I know it’s the beginning of the season, but we don’t want to get used to this. For us, it’s win or misery.”
