Adebayo and Herro provide spark Heat hopes it can keep alive: ‘We just followed their lead’
With losses in seven of its last eight games and a fourth straight appearance in the NBA’s play-in tournament looming as a likely possibility, the Miami Heat was in desperate need of a spark.
The Heat’s leading duo of Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro provided that spark, leading a spirited locker room at halftime and then delivering down the stretch in clutch moments to help Miami hold on for a much-needed 119-109 bounce-back win against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday night at Kaseya Center.
The Heat turned it around in 24 hours, earning a quality home victory in Miami after suffering one of its worst losses of the season in a 17-point defeat to the woeful Pacers in Indianapolis on Sunday night. The Heat improved to an impressive 12-4 on the second night of back-to-back sets this season.
“It was great to see those two really pull us through,” Heat sixth man Jaime Jaquez Jr. said of Adebayo and Herro. “When those two are going, we feel unstoppable. So when them two are on the same page, it’s great. We just followed their lead, seriously. So it was good to see it.”
After the Heat’s 13-point first-quarter lead quickly disappeared to enter halftime in a three-point hole, Adebayo and Herro spoke in the locker room during the break. They didn’t want to allow another game to slip away and let the late-season slide continue.
“We had a really good halftime,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I’ll just leave it at that.”
But Jaquez offered more insight about what happened in the Heat’s locker room during halftime on Monday, calling the victory “our best win of the year.”
“Halftime happened. It was great, man,” Jaquez said, with the Heat looking to win consecutive games for the first time in three weeks when it hosts the Boston Celtics on Wednesday at Kaseya Center (7:30 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun and ESPN). “It was one of our best halftimes ever, I want to say, since I’ve been here at least. Tyler and Bam really brought us together during that time, for sure.”
Herro called it a “productive halftime.”
“We were able to get things done,” Herro said. “We were able to speak on things, eye-to-eye communication.”
As the two longest-tenured Heat players and the two highest-paid players on the roster, Adebayo and Herro took it upon themselves to deliver a message that they felt their teammates needed to hear at halftime Monday. They didn’t want it to become the Heat’s eighth loss in nine games.
“It’s our responsibility. We want to win at the end of the day,” said Adebayo, who is in his third season as the Heat’s captain. “That’s one thing we do, we care. Obviously, it’s very disappointing when you drop games and you see the standings shift. But for us, it’s taking ownership.”
So, Adebayo and Herro took ownership of the locker room at halftime and then ownership of the game in the second half to lead the Heat to the win.
The Heat began the second half on a 29-11 run to pull ahead by 15 points with 3:29 left in the third quarter and regain control of the game.
“It felt like in the third quarter, the ball was popping, the ball was moving, guys were getting stops, guys were flying around,” Herro said. “We came out with a lot of energy in that second half.”
But the 76ers still nearly escaped with the win, going on a 35-16 run to take a four-point lead with 3:22 remaining in the fourth quarter.
That’s when the Heat closed the door on the 76ers with 14 unanswered points to pull away and go ahead by 10 points with 45.8 seconds to play. Adebayo began the game-winning run with a putback dunk to cut the deficit to two, and then Herro hit back-to-back threes to put the Heat ahead by four points with 2:08 remaining.
Adebayo (23 points, 16 rebounds, six assists and one steal) and Herro (30 points, four rebounds, three assists, one steal and two blocks) combined for 53 points, 20 rebounds, nine assists, two steals and two blocks. Adebayo closed with a plus/minus of plus-27 and Herro was a plus 18.
Adebayo and Herro also were on the court for the entire fourth quarter Monday, as they each logged 42 minutes on the second night of the back-to-back set with All-Star guard Norman Powell missing his second straight game due to an illness.
“It just became so important in the fourth quarter to have both of them on the floor for those final 12 minutes,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo and Herro. “Our backs are against the wall. Everybody knows what the deal is. We need everybody in that locker room, but we need to really lean on our main guys right now.”
Despite Monday’s feel-good win, the Heat still faces an uphill battle to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.
With just six regular-season games remaining, the Heat (40-36) entered Tuesday in ninth place in the East. Miami needs to finish among the East’s top six teams to clinch a playoff spot and avoid the play-in tournament that features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.
With so little time left to make up ground in the standings, Basketball Reference’s playoff probabilities report has the Heat entering Tuesday with a 9.2% chance of finishing with a top-six seed in the East to avoid the play-in tourney. This is familiar territory for Miami, which has needed to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament in each of the last three seasons.
“I know it’s just one game, but we certainly want to build on this,” Spoelstra said following Monday’s win over the 76ers. “We know where we are. We know where we are in the standings and everything. But we want to build these last six games.”
The Heat has been trending in a bad direction during the past few weeks, but it hopes that Monday’s win is the start of a strong finish to the regular season. Miami is just 2-7 over its last nine games after reaching nine games above .500 on March 12.
“We have a lot of pent-up anger and frustration and disappointment, collectively,” Spoelstra said. “We feel like we’re better than what we’ve been the last two weeks. It’s been extremely frustrating. And tonight everybody was able just to focus on the task at hand, and it was all the multiple efforts that we needed.”
The Heat also needed Adebayo and Herro to step up at halftime and then step up in the clutch on Monday. It’s the spark that Miami was looking for, and a spark it will try to keep alive Wednesday against the Celtics.
“Obviously, not just only I speak, but when Tyler speaks, it moves the room,” Adebayo said. “And to have your two cornerstones really move the room, and you see what that translated to in the second half. We need more of that.”
