Heat seek to change new selfish ways
In midst of fractured reality, ‘We’ve got to start playing for each other more’
It is perhaps the ultimate condemnation of a team coached by Erik Spoelstra and orchestrated by Pat Riley.
The Miami Heat have become selfish, fractured.
Says who? Says the very same players who last season stood as the ultimate Spoelstra-Riley example of cohesion, solidarity, harmony.
“We’ve got to start playing for each other more.”
“We just have to start playing for one another.” That first comment was offered by Duncan Robinson in the wake of Wednesday night’s 103-100 loss to the Washington Wizards at AmericanAirlines Arena.
The second moments later from the same interview seat, by Tyler Herro.
Since Riley repacked the team in the 2019 offseason, the Heat have avoided hard times such as these, with the 7-14 record and 3-10 run over the past 13 games.
During last summer’s experience in the quarantine bubble at Disney World, the Heat were the NBA beacon of bonding, in lockstep on defense, synchronicity on offense.
Then the bubble burst, practice time limited by pandemic protocols adopted for a season played beyond the Disney cocoon.
The result has been meltdowns at moments of truth, losing from 10 up with 3:11 to go in Monday night’s fourth quarter against the Charlotte Hornets and then from 13 up in Wednesday night’s third quarter against the Wizards. Both times at home.
Both times botching decisive sets at the end of the fourth quarter.
“Last year, you saw connectivity on defense and offense,” Robinson said of when the Heat closed within two victories of a championship, “moving the ball, enjoying other people’s success and having fun. I think that’s probably one of the biggest differences I think we’ve all felt.
“We’ve got to start playing for each other more. That’s not to say that one person is sticking the ball, or anything like that. It’s every
body.”
To Herro, in times as complex as these, it still can be so straightforwardly simple.
“Just start playing for one another, like we were in the bubble,” he said. “I think that’s the only thing that’s really changed. We just have to start playing for each other again.”
The challenge will remain similar, yet different, on Friday night, when the Heat and Wizards meet for the second consecutive game
at AmericanAirlines Arena. Only this time, Washington is expected to be bolstered by the return of Russell Westbrook, who rested on Wednesday night, with the Wizards playing on the second night of a back-to-back set. Following that game, eight of the next nine are on the road.
Like the team’s complementary players, the leaders recognize something is missing. But their perspective has not been as focused on fracture.
“We let two slip away,” center Bam Adebayo said of the losses to the Hornets and Wizards. “So the locker room is disappointed.
“I feel like we have mental lapses or two-minute or three-minute stretches where the other team comes back into the game.”
Replicating last season’s success no longer is an option, with enough swapped out parts to make this season’s rotation decidedly different.
“This season’s a little different,” Adebayo said. “So we got to figure out another way how we can still be closer.”
Having had his episodes of angst at other stops during rough patches, Jimmy Butler exited Wednesday night’s loss practically preaching patience.
“Nothing’s really ever as bad as it ever seems, or as good as it seems at the same time,” he said. “So once again, we know what we need to do. It’s said all the time. It’s all about us going out there and doing it. Ain’t no schemes. It’s not that. We know what we’re capable of and we know what we’re supposed to be doing. It’s just up to us to go do it.”
To Butler, it is not as much about solidarity, harmony, camaraderie as it is about failure.
“We haven’t been playing good basketball,” he said. “When you don’t play good basketball, you lose. That’s why we’re 7-14.”