Wiggins scores 42 to help Heat end 10-game skid in blowout win over Hornets. Takeaways and details
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 122-105 win over the Charlotte Hornets (18-53) on Sunday night at Kaseya Center to improve to 1-2 on its five-game homestand and end its 10-game skid. The Heat (30-41) continues this stretch at home on Tuesday, welcoming back Jimmy Butler in a matchup against the Golden State Warriors:
The Heat’s longest losing streak since 2008 is finally over thanks to excellent performances from Andrew Wiggins and Tyler Herro.
The Heat earned its first win since defeating the Washington Wizards on March 3, snapping its long three-week skid. The 10-game losing streak ends tied for the sixth-longest skid in Heat history, marking only the eighth time that the Heat has lost at least 10 straight games in the franchise’s 37 seasons.
But now the Heat is on a one-game winning streak, using 71 combined points from Wiggins and Herro to blow past the Hornets on Sunday.
“I’ll tell you what and I mentioned this to the guys, I’m not going to ever take it for granted,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the team’s first win in three weeks. “I didn’t think that I did take it for granted. But I don’t think we’re going to take it for granted how difficult sometimes it can be to win in this league.”
Heat captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo added: “Man, I do not take it for granted. It just feels great to get a win in the win column, honestly. There’s been a lot of down days and to see us have a breakthrough, I’m proud of this team for not letting go of the rope.”
After a sluggish start, the Heat actually found itself trailing the Hornets by 12 points with 9:21 left in the second quarter.
But the Heat responded, closing the first half on a 28-6 run to enter halftime ahead 57-47. Charlotte scored just six points over the final 9:21 of the second quarter.
The Heat carried that momentum into the second half, beginning the third quarter on a 26-16 run to extend its lead to 20 points midway through the period. The Heat ended up winning the third quarter 39-28 to enter the fourth quarter ahead by 21.
While the Heat has blown a double-digit lead in an NBA-high 20 losses this season, there was no late-game meltdown this time.
After the Heat pulled ahead by 24 points early in the fourth quarter, the Hornets cut the deficit to 13 with 6:17 to play.
But the Heat closed the door on the Hornets with a midrange jumper from Adebayo and a three-pointer from Wiggins to push its lead back up to 18 with 5:28 left in the fourth quarter.
Wiggins was the catalyst behind the Heat’s victory, finishing with a season-high 42 points on 16-of-21 shooting from the field, 6-of-8 shooting on threes and 4-of-7 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds, five assists, two steals and one block in 35 minutes. It marked the second-highest scoring game of Wiggins’ NBA career, only behind his career-high of 47 points that he scored on Nov. 13, 2016 as a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Wiggins has now scored more than 20 points in seven of his first 13 games with the Heat after being acquired from the Warriors in the Butler trade.
“We all played connected,” Wiggins said. “I feel like my team helped me get in great spots to be successful and make some shots on the court.”
Herro added 29 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the field and 2-of-5 shooting on threes, six rebounds and three assists while playing 40 minutes on a sore hip.
Adebayo finished with 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting from the field, four rebounds, two assists and two steals while playing 32 minutes on a sore knee.
Both Adebayo and Herro were questionable for Sunday’s game with their injuries before making themselves available to help the Heat end its skid.
Even after Sunday’s win, the Heat is in a precarious position as the 10th-place team in the Eastern Conference with just 11 regular-season games left to play. The 10th-place Heat is one game behind the ninth-place Chicago Bulls and three games behind the eighth-place Orlando Magic.
If the Heat finishes in 10th place, it would need to win two straight road games in the play-in tournament just to qualify for the playoffs as the East’s No. 8 seed.
“We’ll enjoy this one and hopefully start to put together some games,” Spoelstra said. “The way we look at it, we’ve been playing playoff games with the kind of stress and expectations and context for six weeks. We feel like we’ve been doing that. So if we can just continue to do this and turn these into wins, we think that we can be a dangerous team.”
How good was Wiggins on Sunday? He set a new career-high for made jumpers.
According to NBA tracking stats, Wiggins shot 13 of 16 on jumpers in Sunday’s win. The 13 made jumpers are a new career-high for Wiggins, as he surpasses his previous career-high mark of 10 made jumpers.
Wiggins shot 3 of 5 in the restricted area, 2 of 3 on non-rim paint shots, 5 of 5 on non-paint twos, 1 of 1 on corner threes and 5 of 7 on above-the-break threes.
“Wiggs made about every shot he took tonight,” Herro said with a laugh.
Wiggins also became the first Heat player to record at least 42 points, six made threes, five assists, two steals and a block in a single game.
Since getting traded to the Heat on Feb. 6, Wiggins has averaged 21 points on 15.4 shots per game in 13 appearances. He’s shooting 48 percent from the field and 36.3 percent on threes with the Heat.
That’s an uptick compared to what he was doing with the Warriors, while being used in more of a complementary offensive role as part of a system built around Stephen Curry. Wiggins averaged 17.6 points on 13.7 shots per game with the Warriors this season before last month’s trade.
“We want him to be more. The role for us is more,” Spoelstra said of Wiggins. “And it’s not better or worse, he had a great role where he was before. But we need him to be more and he wants to take on that kind of challenge. He makes us different.”
The Heat made another change to its starting lineup, re-inserting Duncan Robinson into the starting group. But the Heat’s most used lineup on Sunday featured the dynamic defensive duo of Davion Mitchell and Haywood Highsmith.
The Heat opened Sunday’s game with a lineup of Herro, Robinson, Wiggins, Kel’el Ware and Adebayo.
This marked this group’s second start of the season, as they also were used to begin the Heat’s March 15 loss to the Grizzlies in Memphis. Since then, the Heat has used three different starting lineups in the last three games before returning to this group on Sunday.
Robinson closed Sunday’s win with three points on 1-of-2 shooting from three-point range, two rebounds and two assists in 19 minutes.
While the Heat’s starting lineup played 12 minutes together on Sunday, it was the unit of Mitchell, Herro, Wiggins, Highsmith and Ware that changed the game for the Heat. This five-man group outscored the Hornets by 19 points 13 minutes together.
Most of that good work came in the second quarter, when the Mitchell-Herro-Wiggins-Highsmith-Ware lineup turned a six-point deficit with 6:12 left in the first half into a 10-point lead at halftime. Mitchell and Highsmith combined for three steals and two blocks off the Heat’s bench in the win.
“I thought H and Davion really sparked us in that second quarter,” Spoelstra said.
Guard Terry Rozier has fallen out of the Heat’s rotation.
The struggling Rozier received his third straight DNP-CD (did not play, coach’s decision). He has six DNP-CDs this season and all of them have come in the last month.
This is not surprising, considering Rozier is in the middle of one of the worst seasons of his NBA career. But it is unfortunate for the Heat, as Rozier began the season as a starter and Miami gave up a first-round pick to acquire him from the Hornets midway through last season.
Rozier is averaging 11.2 points per game on 39.6 percent shooting from the field and 30 percent shooting from three-point range in 59 appearances this season. That would be the fewest points he has averaged and the worst field-goal percentage he has recorded in a season since his fourth NBA season in 2018-19, with Rozier’s three-point percentage currently his worst for a season since his rookie year in 2015-16.
Rozier is one of only four players in the NBA who entered Sunday shooting worse than 40 percent from the field and worse than 31 percent on threes while playing in at least 50 games this season. That list also includes Brooklyn Nets guard Keon Johnson, Philadelphia 76ers guard Ricky Council IV and Magic guard Jett Howard.
Instead of Rozier, the Heat used Highsmith, Mitchell, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Alec Burks off the bench on Sunday against the Hornets. Heat rookie Pelle Larsson also played the final 19.3 seconds of the lopsided win.
Forward Nikola Jovic remains out for the Heat with a broken right hand, but he’s expected to be re-evaluated soon.
Jovic missed his 16th straight game on Sunday because of a broken shooting hand.
But with Sunday marking four weeks since Jovic suffered a fracture in the second metacarpal of his right hand in the Heat’s Feb. 23 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks, he’s expected to be re-evaluated soon. At the time of the injury, the Heat announced that Jovic “will be in a splint and re-evaluated in four weeks.”
“We’re still waiting on an evaluation,” Spoelstra said before Sunday’s game when asked for an update on Jovic’s injury. “But he’s able to do everything. As you can imagine, he’s doing all the conditioning, he’s doing all the weight room work that he can do. So that won’t be an issue. It will just be whenever he’s fully cleared, just to get comfortable with the ball and everything. And he’s doing exercises with that in that regard, as well.”
After opening this season as a Heat starter, Jovic established himself as an important part of the Heat’s bench rotation. He logged double-digit minutes in 31 straight games before going out with his hand injury.
Jovic is averaging career-highs in points (10.7 per game), assists (2.8) and minutes (25.1) this season. When available, Jovic has also brought size to the Heat’s rotation at 6-foot-10 while shooting 37.1 percent on 4.6 three-point attempts per game this season to help space the floor for Miami’s offense.
The Heat is 4-12 with Jovic sidelined over the last month.
The Heat also remained without Josh Christopher (G League), Keshad Johnson (G League), Dru Smith (left Achilles surgery) and Isaiah Stevens (G League) against the Hornets.
The Hornets were without Damion Baugh (G League), Josh Green (disc herniation), Tre Mann (disc herniation), Brandon Miller (right wrist ligament repair), Josh Okogie (left hamstring strain) and Grant Williams (right ACL repair) on Sunday.
This story was originally published March 23, 2025 at 8:28 PM.
