Heat again left to wonder: So, who let the ‘dog’ out?
Haslem: Players have to keep chip on their shoulders
MIAMI — Wednesday’s Miami Heat film session featured extensive viewing of the 15-point fourth quarter that sealed Tuesday night’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets, the team’s sixth defeat in the last seven games.
“[Wednesday] was all about solutions and trying to get better,” coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Nobody’s happy about how this thing’s been going. Enough about that. We just have continue to get better. That’s all it was [Wednesday]. We watched the fourth quarter, but also offensively we didn’t get organized in a fashion that we need to.”
Spoelstra said there were numerous layers of that lack of organization.
“It’s a bit of a mixed bag. It’s a domino effect,” he said. “Getting organized, understanding what we’re looking for and then the decision-making on top of that. We’ll continue to get better at it. We worked on those layers today.”
Spoelstra spoke mostly in generalities, pushing past a question about effort.
“It’s getting to our strengths more often than we get to our weaknesses. Sometimes it’s as simple as that,” he said. “[Wednesday] was about reminders of what we’re good at and we want to get to those Spoelstra: “Nobody’s happy about how this things more often.”
That’s where lockerroom leader Udonis Haslem took over.
“I feel like we’ve got to get back to our identity of who we are and what we are,” the veteran big man said. “We’ve always had an underdog mentality, every time we stepped out on the floor. We’ve got to keep that chip on our shoulder — remember how we got here, remember who we are, remember what kind of team we are.
“We’re a lunch-pail, junkyard-dog team and even when the ball’s not going in the hole, we’ve been able to hang our hats on our defense the last couple of years.”
Last week, guard Tyler Johnson spoke of the Heat losing some of their “dog,” the type of edge players on the roster had when fighting for NBA legitimacy and the contracts they since have secured.
“We’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror,” guard Wayne Ellington said. “I don’t think it’s gone. I don’t think our ‘dog’ is gone. It’s one of those things of us finding it.
“There’s a lot of different circumstances that crossed our minds a little bit and I think that’s kind of what it is. As soon as we get rid of that, we’re going to start realizing the type of team that we have been. We’ve got the same group. So it’s not like much has changed. We can get back to that. It’s far from too late.”
With the Heat at 6-11, Haslem stressed that the team can’t let it get too late.
“I’m going to keep pushing these guys,” he said. “I’m going to keep making sure we work hard in practice. I’m going to make sure these guys understand that the only way we’re going to dig ourselves out of this hole is if we change some things.”Nobody’s coming. No cavalry is saving us. Nobody feels sorry for us. We’re going to have to pick ourselves up from the bootstraps and dig ourselves out of this hole.”
Traveling party: The Heat announced that Tyler Johnson (hamstring), Goran Dragic (knee) and Dion Waiters (ankle) will not travel on the two-game trip to Chicago on Friday and Toronto on Sunday. There had been initial hope that Johnson would be back sooner, but he did not practice Wednesday, with the team given Thursday off for the holiday... Center Hassan Whiteside did not practice Wednesday due to knee tendinitis, but Spoelstra said he is cleared to play Friday.