Heat returns to Miami in 0-2 series hole, working to solve Cavs: ‘You figure it out or you don’t’
The Miami Heat began its long nine-day trip last week fighting to save its season. The Heat returns to Miami after its long trip also fighting to save its season.
That’s because after winning back-to-back win-or-go-home play-in tournament games in Chicago and Atlanta last week to become the first 10th-place team in either conference to make the playoffs from the play-in tournament, the Heat dropped the first two games of its first-round playoff series against the Cavaliers in Cleveland.
After falling to the Eastern Conference’s top-seeded Cavaliers 121-112 in Game 2 on Wednesday night at Rocket Arena, the Eastern Conference’s eighth-seeded Heat now finds itself in an 0-2 hole in the best-of-7 series that now shifts to Miami for Games 3 and 4.
“We’ll get to work,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, with the series in the middle of a two-day break ahead of Game 3 on Saturday afternoon at Kaseya Center. “We have a couple days and we just got to figure it out. It has been a couple of games where we’re right there and now we just have to figure out how to get it over the top.
“It’s going to take more, it’s going to take collectively us digging deeper and we have respect for who they are, what they can do. But we have to be better.”
The Heat remains determined to make this a competitive series despite facing a Cleveland team that finished 27 games ahead of Miami in the East standings. But the Heat’s uphill battle in this series has become even stepper after the first two games.
Entering this year’s playoffs, teams that drop the first two games of a best-of-7 series have gone on to lose the series 92 percent (28-323) of the time.
The Heat’s history also reflects the long odds it faces, as it has rallied to win a best-of-7 playoff series after losing the first two games just once in franchise history. That came in the 2006 NBA Finals, when the Heat came back from an 0-2 series deficit against the Dallas Mavericks by winning four games in a row to claim its first NBA championship behind the greatness of Dwyane Wade.
“We’re closer than we think we are,” Heat forward Haywood Highsmith said after Game 2. “We’re right there, knocking on the door. It was a one-possession game. We just got to do a couple more things and maybe we’ll come out with the win next time.”
Highsmith is right — the Heat did make Game 2 closer than its 21-point defeat in Sunday’s Game 1.
Even after the Cavaliers hit 11 threes in Wednesday’s second quarter to break the NBA record for the most made threes in a single quarter of a playoff game, the Heat cut a 19-point deficit to just two points in the final minutes before Donovan Mitchell exploded for 10 points in the final 4:02 of Game 2 to help the Cavaliers hold on for the win.
“I don’t think there’s any moral victories in this, honestly,” said Heat guard Tyler Herro, who scored a game-high 33 points in Game 2 and is averaging 27 points per game on 50 percent shooting from the field and 41.2 percent shooting on threes through the first two games of the series. “But you can take some things, the positives from this and try to carry it over to Game 3.
“We’ll watch film, put a game plan together, see what we can take from this game and carry over to the next. I thought we came out better tonight. We had a better disposition on both sides, but we’re going to need that for a full 48 minutes.”
But the reality is the Heat lost Wednesday despite making 16 threes and shooting 51.9 percent from the field. NBA teams held an all-time record of 76-1 in playoff games when hitting at least 16 threes and shooting better than 51 percent from the field before the Heat dropped Game 2.
A big reason for that is the fact that the Cavaliers have scored 121 points in each of the first two games of the series. Miami has had trouble defending a Cleveland offense that posted the NBA’s top offensive rating this regular season, as the Cavaliers also entered Thursday with the NBA’s best offensive rating at this early stage of the playoffs with 133 points scored per 100 possessions.
“This isn’t supposed to be easy,” Spoelstra said. “So our task is to make it tough and we have to figure it out. You figure it out or you don’t.”
The Heat is trying to figure it out, making some big adjustments for Game 2 that produced mixed results.
The Heat inserted Davion Mitchell into the starting lineup and moved Alec Burks completely out of the rotation. Mitchell was one of the Heat positives in Game 2, scoring 14 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter and providing quality on-ball defense against the Cavaliers’ myriad of offensive weapons while also allowing Herro to play in more of an off-ball role offensively.
“It was a couple different factors with that,” Spoelstra said of the lineup change. “We wanted to be able to organize ourselves offensively at the start a little bit better. Get Tyler off the ball, [Andrew Wiggins] off the ball. Then obviously some defensive presence. His competitive spirit on the ball was very good all night and you’re dealing with two guards who can put a lot of pressure on you.”
The Heat also plugged Nikola Jovic and Pelle Larsson into its bench rotation for Game 2 for their first meaningful minutes since they suffered their respective injuries. In addition, the Heat looked to take more threes to try to keep up with the Cavaliers’ elite three-point shooting, taking 45 threes in Game 2 after putting up only 32 threes in Game 1.
“We’ll watch film and see what we did well,” Herro said after Game 2. “It felt like we were running a little bit more, obviously getting stops. ... I think that’s the main thing that I took away in the second half, we were able to get more stops and turn that into three on threes, four on fours, that we can generate some easier baskets.”
For the Cavaliers, guard Darius Garland made their offensive game plan sound simple.
“Pick on Tyler Herro and take care of the ball,” Garland said. “Don’t play in tight spaces and pick on their weak defenders, go at them.”
That strategy has worked so far, as the Cavaliers have scored an efficient 1.2 points per possession on the 50 possessions that Herro been the screener’s defender. Cleveland has relentlessly hunted Herro’s defense, as he was the screener defender on a career-high 32 possessions in Game 2.
But the Heat’s game plan is a little more complex against a loaded Cavaliers team that finished the regular season with the NBA’s second-best record.
“That’s the deal,” Spoelstra said after falling behind 0-2 in the series. “We’ll get to Miami and we’ll get to work.”
Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson expects more push-back from the Heat with the series moving to Miami.
“This is not your typical 10th seed, so it’s to be expected,” Atkinson said after nearly blowing a 19-point lead in Game 2. “We knew it was going to be a dog fight. It’s going to be hard.”
The Heat’s goal in Miami: Win two home games and even the series 2-2.
“Get home, get a great cooked meal and you go out and try to get you two at the crib,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo said.
