After another late-game meltdown, Heat’s Adebayo asks: ‘How many times we got to keep learning this lesson?’
After lamenting another fourth-quarter collapse, Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra went through the positives from the first three quarters of Wednesday night’s 115-101 road loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“Right now, I’m going with what I saw in the first three quarters,” Spoelstra said following Wednesday’s defeat. “We’ve made some progress in the last 24 hours from our session last night and in the shootaround. And then we weren’t able to sustain.”
The Heat played well enough through the first three quarters to take a 10-point lead into the fourth quarter against the team with the NBA’s top record.
“I see a lot of positives that we can build on,” Spoelstra continued. “It’s not about moral victories. But right now, we’re trying to build this thing fast.”
But Heat captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo didn’t want to talk about the positives from Wednesday’s loss. When told by a reporter that Spoelstra took a glass-half-full approach and complimented the Heat’s play through the first three quarters, Adebayo didn’t want to focus on that.
“No, I don’t want to go there,” Adebayo said.
Instead, Adebayo wanted to focus on the period that cost the Heat Wednesday’s game.
With the Heat entering the fourth quarter ahead 93-83, the Thunder opened the period with 24 unanswered points to take its first lead of the night and turn that 10-point deficit at the start of the period into a 14-point lead with 6:27 to play.
The Heat went the first 5:47 of the fourth quarter without scoring a point before Adebayo ended that game-changing drought by hitting a three-pointer with 6:13 left in the period.
The Heat (25-27) never recovered, as the Thunder dominated the fourth quarter 32-8 on its way to the comeback win. It marked Miami’s third straight loss, falling two games below .500 for the first time since it stood at 5-7 in mid-November.
While the Thunder exploded for 32 points on 13-of-23 (56.5%) shooting from the field and 6-of-13 (46.2%) shooting from three-point range in the fourth quarter, the Heat shot just 3 of 18 (16.7%) from the field and 2 of 10 (20%) on threes while committing six turnovers in the final period.
The only two Heat players who scored in Wednesday’s fourth quarter were Adebayo (five points) and Andrew Wiggins (three points).
“It’s one of those things, man, it’s a lesson,” Adebayo said, with the Heat right back at it Thursday against the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center (8:30 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun) before entering the All-Star break. “But how many times we got to keep learning this lesson? And it’s not just the players, it’s the coaches, as well. We got to understand that we got to all be on the same page.”
It’s a lesson the Heat has been forced to learn more than most teams around the league, as it has already blown a double-digit lead in 13 losses this season. That’s the second-most such collapses in the NBA this season behind only the Utah Jazz.
In addition, there have been four single-digit fourth quarters in the NBA this season and the Heat has three of them (eight fourth-quarter points in a Dec. 21 loss to the Orlando Magic, eight fourth-quarter points in Wednesday’s loss to the Thunder and nine fourth-quarter points in Friday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets).
“Just finding ways to play through adversity, playing through when a team ramps up their pressure like that and starts denying me the ball,” Heat All-Star guard Tyler Herro said when asked for some solutions to the team’s fourth-quarter issues after going scoreless in Wednesday’s fourth quarter. “Just finding different ways to get into our offense so we can get the shots we want without getting taken out of what we want to do.”
One potential solution to the Heat’s late-game problem is to revisit its substitution pattern.
With a 10-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter, the Heat opened the period with a lineup of Herro, Alec Burks, Haywood Highsmith, Nikola Jovic and Kel’el Ware. Adebayo, who had totaled 22 points and 11 rebounds in 26 minutes through the first three quarters, was on the bench to begin the fourth quarter.
By the time that the Heat subbed in Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins and Davion Mitchell with 9:31 left in the fourth quarter, the Thunder had already stolen momentum with a 13-0 run to pull ahead by three points.
“We checked out up 10. We checked back in down three,” Adebayo said. “From that standpoint, we got to all understand it’s a momentum shift and we got to understand how we can stop this snowball effect. So for us, it’s figuring out how to basically settle the offense and then get stops on the other end.”
Jimmy Butler used to help settle the Heat’s offense in late-game situations through his ability to draw fouls and generate quality offense for himself and others, but he’s no longer on Miami’s roster after last week’s trade to the Golden State Warriors. Butler was either not available to play or already off the team in each of the Heat’s three single-digit fourth quarters this season.
These painful lessons will continue to come for the Heat until it learns the lesson and proves it in games.
“It’s not fun going through this,” Spoelstra said. “But we’re learning our lessons. We’re going to continue to get better. And then ultimately, I want to see us make real strides in our resolve and grit when the game is not going the way we want it to go. Can we still function? Can we still do the things that put us in a position to have success?”
