The great shooter who encouraged Robinson. And Heat notes on Martin, Morris, Bosh, Tucker
A six-pack of Miami Heat notes on a Saturday:
▪ When Duncan Robinson heard the murmurs from the crowd after missing three-pointers earlier this season, when the doubts threatened to invade his psyche, when the pressure escalated after signing the $90 million contract, the Heat’s sharp-shooter always had a support system.
And besides friends and family, that support system included one of the NBA’s most accomplished shooters in recent years: JJ Redick.
The veteran guard -- who hit 1950 threes on 41.5 percent three-point shooting before retiring last summer -- buoyed Robinson’s spirits and encouraged him to keep launching when the shots weren’t falling consistently earlier this season.
“He’s always been in my corner,” Robinson said of Redick, who’s now an ESPN analyst.
“He’s seen it all in this league, offered me some words of encouragement. His advice stuck. I talked to Redick. I talked to a bunch of people. I’m fortunate to have a lot of people in my corner willing to lend a word and ear, whatever I need.”
Well, it wasn’t always like that.
Redick, while announcing a recent Heat-Suns game on ESPN, admitted that he “blew the kid off” the first time that Robinson introduced himself to Redick as a Heat rookie, three years ago.
“Malik Allen was distracting me” at the time, Redick said of the Heat assistant coach. “I didn’t know the kid.”
Redick regards Robinson as “one of the greatest shooters in the game today. He got off to such a slow start, but the percentage is creeping up toward 40, which is where every great shooter wants to be.”
After shooting 32.1 percent on threes in October and 33.1 percent in November, Robinson shot 37.6, 41.1, 35.4 and 44.3 percent on threes in the four months since.
That 44.3 shooting on threes in March is 10th highest in the league for players who have made at least 25 threes.
After hitting his third three-pointer early on against Oklahoma City on Friday night, he peered at the Thunder bench and said something whimsical about how they were defending him.
“Any time you see the ball go in a couple times, you start feeling a little rambunctious,” he said when asked about addressing the OKC bench. “It wasn’t the usual coverage I see so I was a little surprised. It was a little bit of a word of advice as well.”
When asked his biggest area of growth this season, he cites nothing on court.
“Probably between the ears,” he said. “Dealing with adversity is a skill, something you can work on, wrestling with those lows and highs and staying even keeled.”
With his 200th three-pointer of the season on Friday, Robinson is now only the 11th player in NBA history to produce three seasons with at least 200 three-pointers.
Before Robinson, only Tim Hardaway, Damon Jones and Wayne Ellington hit 200 threes in a single season for the Heat; each did it once.
Robinson has now raised his season scoring average to 11.4 - down from 13.1 last season - and his three-point shooting to 37 percent. His 204 threes are sixth in the league this season.
▪ When Erik Spoelstra on Friday opted to play Markieff Morris at center for the second time this week, Morris had a message for Heat teammates when he entered the game against Oklahoma City.
“Kieff emphasized when he came in at the five, I’ll keep bigs off the boards and you all come in and get your seven [rebounds] apiece,” Caleb Martin said.
When the Heat opts for Morris instead of Dwayne Dedmon at backup center - as was the case Friday - Martin spoke of wing players needing, even more so, to show “pride on the perimeter to get more rebounds. We’ve got to do more jobs as wings to try to help the bigs.”
The 6-8 Morris has averaged 7.6 rebounds per 36 minutes in his career. The 7-0 Dedmon has averaged 12.1 boards per 36 minutes in his career.
▪ Spoelstra doesn’t necessarily feel urgency to give a pre-playoff rest to PJ Tucker, whose three-point shooting has dropped from a league-high 45.0 percent before the All Star break to 22.7 since.
“Every time I’ve suggested it, he’ll just laugh in my face,” Spoelstra said. “Sometimes he’ll scowl at me. With the schedule right now, I don’t think we have to [rest him]. We’ll see when we get there.”
▪ With the Heat honoring Chris Bosh on Friday in the wake of his Hall of Fame induction last September, Spoelstra - who guided that Dwyane Wade/LeBron James/Bosh teams to two championships in four years - playfully wondered if he could have done even more with Bosh, who averaged 18.0 points and 7.3 rebounds and shot 34.4 percent on threes in his six seasons with the Heat.
“It’s crazy how much differently I would have used him,” Spoelstra said. “I didn’t have the library, creativity, thought process at that time. It’s a shame. You really could have unlocked his skill level.
“He would be a perfect fit with this team, and that would be with Bam [Adebayo]. He would be incredible. The way he can space the floor, his skill level, ability to draw fouls, put the ball on the floor, create. If I had the foresight at all to see this ahead of time, he would have been even better, another level of Hall of Fame.”
Bosh said Friday night that the “sky is the limit” with this Heat team and said of Adebayo: “I tell Bam all the time, I would shoot way more if I was in that offense. It wouldn’t even be close. He’s more giving and that allows the offense to have more continuity.
“They can flow more, him and Duncan Robinson, that two-man game. You can tell they have great chemistry just off that.... If he really wants to just get into film and continue to get better, he’s going to be able to do that.”
▪ Even with a crowded rotation, it’s difficult to envision Spoelstra not playing Martin, who is sixth on the Heat in plus/minus at 136, third in three-point shooting at 40.3 percent and second among rotation players in defensive field goal percentage allowed to the player he’s defending (42.2).
“He’s the definition of a Swiss Army knife,” Spoelstra said Friday night. “You can plug him into a lot of different roles with different lineups and he’ll find away to make it work. He can defend so many different positions. We’ve missed his presence on the ball. The hustle plays, the deflections, the tip outs, the cuts, just contribute to winning in a big time way.”
Martin had 11 points and three rebounds Friday after missing three games with a knee injury.
▪ The family foundation of Heat managing general partner Micky Arison and his wife Madeleine is donating $3 million to World Central Kitchen, Direct Relief and UNICEF USA, which are organizations providing medical and humanitarian aid to Ukrainian refugees displaced or forced to flee abroad because of the war in their homeland.
In addition, Carnival Cruise Line donated $50,000 to World Central Kitchen in honor of its employees and crew members from Ukraine.
This story was originally published March 19, 2022 at 12:22 PM.
