Heat tries to overcome strange disadvantage. And Heat gets a victory in ‘culture’ lawsuit
For playoff teams down 0-2, returning home typically is a source of hope, a tangible reason for optimism about potentially climbing back into a series.
For the Heat, that hope isn’t necessarily based in the reality of this season’s body of work.
The eighth-seeded Heat enters Saturday’s Game 3 against top-seeded Cleveland (1 p.m., TNT, FanDuel Sports Sun) not only in an 0-2 hole in this best-of-7 first-round series, but also trying to reverse a 16-month pattern of losing far too often on its home court.
The Heat is not only the worst home team (by record) in the playoffs, but the worst in four years.
Just 19-22 at Kaseya Center this season, the Heat won just one more game at home than it did on the road during the regular season. Counting Miami’s two play-in road wins at Chicago and Atlanta, the Heat has exited the court victorious more often on the road than at Kaseya Center.
The Heat is the first team to enter the playoffs with a losing regular-season home record since the Pelicans (19-22) and Nets (20-21) in 2020-21.
Meanwhile, Cleveland was 30-11 on the road this season, joining Boston and Oklahoma City as the only teams to win at least 30 of its 41 road games.
Among those Cavs road wins was a 20-point thrashing of the Heat on Jan. 29 at Kaseya Center.
So why hasn’t the Heat been better at home this season?
“I can go down the list of a bunch of [expletive] for real,” Bam Adebayo responded Friday. “You got [the Andrew Wiggins trade]. We went through that whole [Jimmy Butler trade] ordeal. We just couldn’t figure it out. It wasn’t like we were blown out at home. We would lose by one or two points, game-winners. The losing streak didn’t help.”
Especially discouraging was the Heat’s 6-16 home record against playoff teams this season. Those 16 losses included 20-point drubbings by Denver and Cleveland, a 19-point loss to Orlando and an 18-point defeat to Boston.
Including lopsided losses to Boston, New Orleans, Golden State and Denver in winter/spring of the 2024 calendar year, no playoff team, during the past 16 months, has been blown out more at home than the Heat.
Many NBA players have clearly better numbers at home than on the road. That’s not the case with the Heat.
While Tyler Herro has played well at home, he has averaged more points on the road this season (24.8 to 23.2), a disparity that would be greater if his high-scoring games in the play-in games and Game 2 of the Cavaliers series were factored in.
Adebayo has shot three-pointers far better on the road (39.6 percent) than at home (30.6).
Haywood Highsmith shot significantly better on the road than at home (47.8 percent to 43.5 percent).
Duncan Robinson was the only Heat rotation player who played far better at home than on the road this season.
The Heat has progressively regressed at home the past few years, descending from 27-14 two seasons ago to 22-19 last season and this season finishing as one of only 10 teams with a losing record at home.
Heat fans have been encouraged to wear white to Saturday’s game, and Adebayo expects a raucous atmosphere.
“Everything is different in the playoffs,” Adebayo said. “I expect the whole crowd there to be there at tip-off. People don’t understand - and this is not me making excuses for our fans - but people don’t understand what type of traffic we have. People get here when the game starts. You are not going to get in until midway through the first, almost the second” quarter because of bad traffic in South Florida.
“It’s not like we’ve got a dead city where there’s no traffic,” Adebayo added. “[Saturday], our crowd, our sixth man is going to be there, and we’re going to be good.”
Availability update
Guard Terry Rozier, who injured his ankle in a pregame warmup in Cleveland earlier this week, did not participate in practice and was ruled out for Saturday.
Kevin Love, who is dealing with a personal family matter, remains away from the team and also is out for Game 3.
Culture wars
The extent to which the Heat has benefited from trademarking the word “culture” and variations of it came to light this week when Sportico reported that the franchise has sold more than 100,000 pieces of culture-branded apparel for more than $1 million.
The Heat previously secured federal trademark registrations for “culture,” “Heat culture,” “court culture” and “el Heat cultura.”
Last year, Joel Pena — a fashion designer who says he has designed merchandise for several major companies — sued the Heat, the NBA and Nike for infringement, claiming they violated trademark law by selling apparel featuring the world culture.
The Heat countersued Pena, asserting (according to sportico.com) that the team has “superior rights in the culture marks and that Pena’s federal and state trademark registrations ought to be canceled” and alleging that Pena is trying to “to freeride off the goodwill” of the team’s “longstanding, well-established, and highly public use of Culture and Culture-formative” trademarks.
Last week, a New York federal judge denied Pena’s motion to dismiss the Heat’s lawsuit against him.
In 2020, team president Pat Riley said the team’s “culture” depicted how the Heat was “the hardest-working, best-conditioned, most-professional, unselfish, toughest, nastiest team in the league.”
Here’s my Friday story on Tyler Herro’s response to Darius Garland’s insult of his defense, and more notes.
This story was originally published April 25, 2025 at 3:58 PM.
