Heat offer template for rebuilding team
Jalen Green made his move, typically swift and sudden, sending him flying toward the rim with the Miami defense collapsing to cut him off.
Green slipped his pass perfectly inside. But while the baby-faced Rockets rookie had become a blur, Heat veteran Kyle Lowry had transformed into a fire hydrant. He took the charge as he has countless times before from the Finals to All-Star games.
Green received the first of many welcome-to-the -NBA moments to come.
These are the lessons only experience will teach. While the Rockets had their highlight moments, the sort that tease of far-off possibilities, the Heat played a lineup that could contend for a championship and demonstrated the difference.
The Heat defense smothered the Rockets, generally limiting them to whatever they could carve out from hitting contested 3s on the way to a 21-point lead before finishing off the Rockets 113106 on Thursday night at Toyota Center in the second preseason game for both.
In some respects, this was what Rockets coach Stephen Silas seemed to expect, and even want.
“We need a good test,” he said before the game. “This is a veteran team that is coming together as a group.”
He will have plenty to discuss, from the struggles to match up in transition defense when Lowry pushed the pace to the issues throughout the game closing out on Miami shooters Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro.
He especially with have extensive videotape demonstrating the need to follow one offensive action with another.
The Heat did give the Rockets a good look at what an established, veteran contender looks like.
From P.J. Tucker blasting officials when Silas got away with picking up a loose ball, to Lowry shrewdly finding ways to fill the stat sheet while rarely taking a shot, the Heat treated the game to start a preseason back-to-back as if it were in late May, rather than the first week of October.
For the Heat, the toughest competition might have been whether Butler, Lowry or Tucker was grumpiest.
Butler won when after a particularly muscular drive, Lowry came off the bench to celebrate it and Butler shoved him back, bringing laughs from his new teammate and the Miami bench.
The Rockets had their moments. Green displayed the deep shooting touch he did not in his preseason debut Tuesday, hitting his first shot of the night and going from missing all six of his 3s against the Wizards to knocking down 4-of-8 from deep in the first half when he had 16 of his 20 points.
The end of the bench, with veteran Dante Exum and the kids — Josh Christopher, Armoni Brooks, K.J. Martin and either Sengun or Usman Garuba — made a run much like Tuesday’s, reducing a 21-point lead to six before the Heat pulled away for good in the closing minutes.
If Silas wanted his team to get a good look at what it aspires to become, the Heat provided it.