Players, Spoelstra blunt after Heat falls to 2-5. What they’re saying and what must change
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who often says his team has enough, seemingly has had enough.
With Miami at 2-5, Spoelstra seems fed up with his team’s defensive disposition early in games and occasional penchant for quick shots, without much ball movement.
And with Miami looking nothing like the team that won 53 games last season, Spoelstra made one thing very clear after the Heat’s 119-113 loss Saturday at previously winless Sacramento:
“Right now, this is about the collective group, how are we going to impact this thing together to impact winning,” he said. “If we try to do it any other way, it’s going to lead to an incredible amount of frustration. Anybody that is trying to do it on their own or anybody that is trying to self will it or anybody trying to work any individual goals with this, it ain’t going to work, it ain’t going to work on either end.”
In the Golden 1 Center locker room, reaction varied.
There was Tyler Herro asking aloud what type of team the Heat wants to be.
There was Jimmy Butler insisting Miami would figure this out.
And there was Bam Adebayo saying the Heat needs to “figure out our identify.”
The Heat has a couple days to try to figure it out before Golden State visits FTX Arena on Tuesday.
“There’s always concern when you’re not winning games and games you’re capable of winning,” Kyle Lowry said. “We had a couple of winnable games” in this 2-5 start.
There was also a curious moment, when a question about Herro’s 34-point game was initially met with a distressed look by Spoelstra.
When the reporter added, “although not in a winning effort,” Spoelstra said: “That’s the most important thing,” offering nothing more.
Whether that was merely a reflection of Spoelstra’s general frustration was unclear.
Herro was blunt afterward:
“After taking five losses, especially after the first half tonight, it’s time we… lock in and decide what type of team we want to be,” Herro said. “If we’re going to just get in shootouts like in the first half [against Sacramento, when Miami fell behind 71-49], then that’s the kind of team we want to be. I know we hang our hat on defense, so we’ve got to cover for each other.”
Asked if the Heat can win shootouts and play in the 120s, Herro said: “I’m not the coach. I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
On defense, the Heat ranks 18th in points allowed per 100 possessions - unusually poor for this organization.
There are numerous factors: containment problems off the dribble, not getting back quickly enough in transition and a size disadvantage that is further exposed by the Heat’s switching defense, which has worked successfully over the years but too often this season has left wing players defending much taller players.
Kings 6-11 center Domantas Sabonis was the latest to expose those mismatches on Saturday, with 18 first-half points before foul trouble limited his impact in the second half.
Does Adebayo believe he needs to talk to Spoelstra about letting him stick more to defending the team’s biggest/best scorer?
“I’ll talk it over with Spo,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. He always does. We always seem to come together and figure it out.”
On one hand, switching capitalizes on one of Adebayo’s greatest gifts - his ability to guard every position. The question is whether the Heat should do it more selectively, to minimize the mismatches.
To Spoelstra, there’s a different issue at play.
“A handful of our games we started slow defensively and then we pick up as we get going,” he said. “That was proven to be very costly. That has to change.
“There is a stark difference to our disposition, activity, communication, effort, all of that in the second half with that desperation as opposed to the start of the game allowing so many easy baskets that just get a team into an incredible rhythm. That’s what we’ll fix.”
Herro blamed the defensive deficiencies on “not being connected, not being on a string together, lack of trust.”
On the other end, Spoelstra bemoaned the lack of ball movement at times.
“Some quick shots, ill advised shots in the first half compounded some of our defensive lapses,” he said of Saturday’s loss in Sacramento.
“We have to be way more consistent to our identity offensively. We’ve been testing the fences to see if we can do it another way. The pain of losing will get us to change it quickly. [Saturday] was probably one of our worst intentional offensive games in terms of getting the ball where we needed to go. We took some quick shots that got us in trouble. That’s more of an issue on the road.”
Asked about that, Butler said: “We take a couple quick ones, couple of bad ones. Every team does. Certain guys on every team are allowed to do that. Maybe we do need to move the ball a little more. I really don’t think offense is the problem.”
As Lowry put it, “we let our one-pass shots and no-pass shots affect us.”
The Heat is averaging 32.9 three-point attempts a game, which is 18th in the league. Last season, Miami averaged 36.8, which was 12th.
“Teams are definitely running us off [the three-point line], making things harder, making us score inside the paint or score inside the arc,” Herro said.
“There are still ways we can generate more threes. That’s up to Spo. I know he likes us to get up 35-plus threes a game. We’ve got to make a conscious effort getting those threes up and getting the ball in the right peoples’ hands to generate more threes.”
Butler said the team’s slow starts are “sad because we are capable of doing it. It does start with that starting unit. We’ve got to get back, bring the energy from the jump.”
Then Butler presented a more optimistic tone. “We’ll figure this out, just like we will figure out everything else.”
Udonis Haslem also offered a sky-isn’t-falling perspective:
“We’re going to fix all that. It’s just details. We’re a very detail oriented team. And when we don’t focus in on the details and really concentrate, then that’s what it looks like.
“We don’t just ask our players to be tapped in physically. We ask them to be tapped in mentally as well. A lot of difference coverages, a lot of different schemes. We will get it. Trust me. We will get it.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2022 at 11:39 PM.
