History shows Heat’s success in close games not enough
With less than three weeks left in the regular season, the Miami Heat holds a negative net rating that usually belongs to a team with a losing record. The Heat has been outscored by 0.7 points per 100 possessions this season, a net rating that’s worse than a few sub-.500 teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Utah Jazz.
But the Heat (39-34) still finds itself above .500 and in the middle of a playoff race as it enters an important two-game homestand that begins Wednesday against the New York Knicks (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) largely because of its success in close games this season. The Heat has posted a 29-22 record in its league-leading 51 clutch games (one that has a margin of five points or fewer inside the final five minutes of the fourth quarter) and has already tied the single-season
NBA record for the most wins by five points or less with 24 such victories this season.
Explaining the Heat’s good fortune in close games this season can get complicated, and it’s always tough to differentiate how much is due to variance in a small but high leverage portion of the game and how much is actually real.
But one thing is for sure: The Heat has benefited from having two of the NBA’s top clutch players this season in Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro.
Of Butler, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said: “You just always know that the ball can go somewhere and you’re going to get just a clean great decision for your basketball team.”
Of Herro, Spoelstra said: “He has that clutch gene, he really does. It doesn’t matter what’s happening during the course of the game, he’s a killer down the stretch.”
Those aren’t just empty
compliments.
Butler entered Tuesday with the third-most points in clutch situations this season with 144 points on 46-of-93 (49.5 percent) shooting from the field behind only Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox (185 points) and Chicago’s DeMar DeRozan (159) despite missing 11 of the Heat’s clutch games. He also has made the second-most free throws (50) to go with 31 rebounds, 19 assists, six steals and five blocks for a plus-minus of plus-29 in the clutch.
Herro entered Tuesday with a league-high 19 made threes and a leaguebest plus/minus of plus-87 in clutch minutes this season despite missing 10 of the Heat’s clutch games. He also has totaled the 12th-most points in the clutch with 110 points on 37-of-80 (46.3 percent) shooting from the field and 19-of-49 (38.8 percent) shooting from threepoint range.
Some of those impressive numbers are a factor
of the Heat playing in more clutch games than any other team this season, but the high volume and level of efficiency show the trust they have earned from their teammates and their effectiveness in those moments.
“It’s something I’ve built over three, four years here,” Herro said. “My teammates and coaches trust me late in the game, really the whole game, with the ball. They rely on me to make the right plays.”
Butler and Herro’s latest clutch effort helped the Heat rally from a fourthquarter deficit to defeat the Pistons 112-100 in Detroit on Sunday.
After the Pistons pulled ahead 93-90 with 5:56 to play, Butler and Herro teamed up to help the
Heat close the game on a 22-7 run to escape with the victory. Butler and Herro combined for 20 of Miami’s final 22 points and four assists to spark the game-deciding spurt.
Butler recorded 10
points on 5-of-7 shooting from the field during this stretch. One of the makes came on a layup off a timely cut to the basket, the second was a pull-up jumper over Pistons guard Jaden Ivey, the third came on a put-back layup after grabbing the offensive rebound off of his own miss, the fourth was a masterful turnaround jumper after setting a screen on a dribble handoff for Herro and then getting the ball back from Herro in the post, and his final points of the game were scored on a driving layup with the help of a screen from Bam Adebayo.
“It’s always a great ace card when you have just a brilliant basketball player and competitor that you know that you can get the ball to him in any kind of situation,” Spoelstra said of Butler. “We basically, down the stretch in that game, gave him the ball in the post, at the top of the key, in pick-and-rolls, as a screener. Anywhere, he’s
going to help your team generate a good quality high percentage look. It doesn’t matter what the coverage will be. That’s what great players do.”
Herro contributed 10 points on 3-of-3 shooting from the field, including 2-of-2 shooting from beyond the arc during this stretch. Before this lategame takeover, he was in the middle of a rough shooting night with just seven points on 3-of-12 shooting from the field and 1-of-7 shooting from three-point range through the first three quarters.
“I’m just going to write fourth quarter on every notepad to Tyler in every other quarter,” Spoelstra joked. “... He loves those moments, he lives for those moments, he’ll knock some really tough shots down in those moments and that gave us that extra cushion just to take it to 10, those big shots that he hit.”
As for Spoelstra trying to make him believe that every quarter is the fourth quarter, Herro laughed.
“If he starts doing that, I actually might like that,” Herro said. “That actually might give me a little bit more confidence.”
Spoelstra may need to use that trick with the entire team, as the Heat entered Tuesday with the NBA’s sixth-best fourthquarter net rating this season (outscoring teams by 3.7 points per 100 possessions). But the Heat has been outscored by 0.5 points per 100 possessions in first halves and by 5.2 points per 100 possessions in third quarters.
“We want to get consistent play throughout the rotation and throughout the course of the game and try to grab a hold of a game potentially earlier,” Spoelstra said. “We’ve been working diligently to try to get that consistency throughout our rotation.”
The Heat is still working to find that consistency for the full 48 minutes, as it stands with a negative point differential of -36 through the first 73 games of the season despite its winning record. That’s not a good sign, as Miami currently sits in seventh place in the Eastern Conference and faces the real possibility of having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament.
Unsurprisingly, no NBA team has won the championship after closing the regular season with a negative point differential. In fact, the last 16 teams that made the playoffs with a negative point differential were eliminated in the first round, as the 2013-14 Brooklyn Nets were the last team to get past the first round with a negative point differential before being eliminated by the Heat in the second round.
“We need to figure it out now because we slip too many and we’ll be out of the playoffs,” Adebayo said.