Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Heat’s defense has left them at the worst time.
Heat admit they are making too many coverage mistakes
The inherent advantage this season was supposed to be continuity, especially on the defensive end, that after coming together as a team during last season’s 30-11 finish and then remaining largely intact in the offseason, the Miami Heat would arrive to the postseason as five men on a string.
Instead, through the first four games of this best-of-seven openinground NBA playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Heat have let go of that rope when they least could afford to fray, leading to their 3-1 deficit going into Tuesday’s Game 5 at the Wells Fargo Center.
“We have to do a better job of eliminating the mistakes we make,” guard Dwyane Wade said. “Some of those mistakes are turnovers, but some of those mistakes are blown coverages. When you blow a coverage against this team, it seems like every time they make you pay. We’re giving everything we have. We just have to be a little bit smarter with what we do and how we do it.”
That was the predominant takeaway from Saturday’s 106-102 loss at AmericanAirlines Arena and basically has been the story of the series, with the 76ers outscoring the Heat by 42 points over the four fourth quarters to this stage.
“Mental errors down the stretch,” forward James Johnson said.
“Mental lapses,” forward Josh Richardson said.
“We need to be smarter,” guard Goran Dragic said.
All three were part of last season’s 30-11 finish. All three had waited a year for this playoff opportunity. All three, and the rest of the Heat roster, have gone into the locker room with halftime leads during each of the first four games of this series.
And then, at the moments of truth, breakdowns that could leave the sum total of keeping this group together as nothing more than a single playoff victory over two seasons.
“This team has a lot of different triggers you have to deal with,” coach Erik Spoelstra said of the 76ers. “It’s not as if you can just focus on one guy. It’s not necessarily just a complete breakdown. That’s what this team does. They execute very well. They have a lot of different guys. You have to work your defense all five guys focusing in.”
Human nature
The next challenge, Wade said, will be dealing with the seeds of doubt.
“We’ve got to be mature in the mind as a team that doesn’t have a lot of experience in this moment,” he said of Game 5. “But we’ve got to show some maturity in our mind to be able to withstand it and not give up, not let it. They go on a run … don’t let it go.
“It’s human nature sometimes when a team starts putting it on you and you’re down 3-1 to just let it go say, ‘We can’t do it. It’s not our time.’ But all we’ve got to do is worry about this one game and give it everything we have for that one game.”
Dragic said the key will be to stay in the moment, and only in the moment.
“We just need to think about ourselves, try to be focused and not make so many mistakes,” he said. “The arena is going to be loud, so we need to take care of the ball and run our plays and try to read the situation.”
Grand theft
The Heat set a franchise playoff record with their 18 steals in Saturday’s loss. Seven of those steals came from Richardson, which broke the franchise playoff record of six set by LeBron James in Game 2 of the 2012 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Indiana Pacers and then tied by Wade in Game 4 of the 2013 NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs . ...
Richardson, who also had 10 points and seven assists, became the 12th player to record at least 10 points, seven steals and seven assists in a playoff game since steals became an official NBA statistic in 1973.