Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Cooking at home again
Nunn’s 33-point blitz lets Heat put bumpy road trip behind
MIAMI —With Jimmy Butler off, the Miami Heat needed someone else to step forward on the offensive end Wednesday night.
Kendrick Nunn proved up to the challenge.
With the Heat lethargic at times, coach Erik Spoelstra needed someone to leap into action.
Who better than Derrick Jones Jr.? And so, in the wake of uneven play that included a pair of weekend losses to the Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks, the
Heat did what they almost always do this season at AmericanAirlines Arena.
Make it 18-1 home, with a 106-100 victory over the San Antonio Spurs that lifted the Heat to 28-12 overall.
On a night Butler was limited to 12 points on 4-of-11 shooting, Nunn stepped forward with 33 on 13-of-18 shooting. When there was a miss, Jones was there with 12 rebounds, eclipsing his previous season high of seven and two off his career high of 14.
There also were 17 points from Goran Dragic and a 14-point, 13-rebound doubledouble from Bam Adebayo to help offset 30 points from the Spurs’ DeMar DeRozan.
A Butler 3-pointer with 5:24 to play lifted the Heat to an 88-79 lead. It was Butler’s first 3-point conversion in 10 appearances, dating to Dec. 20 against the Knicks. He had missed his previous seven attempts before the conversion.
The Heat held on from there, unlike their fourth-quarter collapses in Brooklyn and New York.
Five degrees of Heat from Wednesday’s game:
1. Early perfection: Nunn was up to 20 points at the intermission on 8-of-8 shooting. He was unable, however, to help produce more than a 51-51 halftime tie, with DeRozan with 14 points at the break, on 6-of-6 shooting.
At one point in the third period, Nunn and DeRozan both stood 9 of 10 from the field.
Nunn was formally presented his December Eastern Conference Rookie of the Month award at halftime, when he stood 4 of 4 from beyond the arc.
2. Short again: The Heat were without rookie guard Tyler Herro due to a knee bruise sustained during Tuesday’s practice.
“If you leave him to his own devices, he’s young enough, he’ll go,” Spoelstra said. “So we wanted to make sure we wanted to do what’s best for him. It’s not a major thing right now. It’s just a knee contusion in the one area.”
The injury happened during a full-pad practice.
“Again, I don’t know how this happens,” Spoelstra said. “Often, we have these guys padded up like Robo Cops and then they get these bruises on the one-centimeter area where they’re not padded.”
3. Johnson stays; Olynyk enters: With Herro out, James Johnson played as eighth man, with Wednesday night his fourth appearance in the last five games.
Instead of turning to Dion Waiters with Herro out, Spoelstra instead injected Kelly Olynyk back into the rotation after four consecutive benchings.
Olynyk had not played since the Jan. 3 road loss to the Orlando Magic.
As for Justise Winslow, the Heat offered no update on the forward who now has missed 18 of the last 19 games with a lowerback bone bruise. Winslow watched from the bench.
“He hasn’t been available, so we’ve worked with who’s been out there,” Spoelstra said. “And we’ve had to pivot a little bit. But we have a lot of guys that have that type of versatility.
“Ultimately, you would love to have your roster available. That’s not realistic in this league. No team has their full complement of players. And you have to be able to pivot, you have to be able to adjust.”
4. Aggressive Adebayo: Adebayo was up to eight rebounds by halftime, playing in front Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who in August cut him from the USA Basketball roster for the World Cup.
“From what I see,” Popovich said, “he’s a different player now than he was when we had all the tryouts. I think that, in general, when I said he wasn’t quite ready, I think he didn’t show what he could really do.”
Popovich added, “I’ve shaken my head several times saying, ‘That’s not the guy that we saw during the tryout.’ Maybe that was my fault. Maybe I should’ve done it differently, so his skills could come out.”
5. Further review: The Spurs lost — and won — a coach’s challenge with 2:59 left in the third period, with the Spurs failing to get a foul overturned on Patty Mills.
The video review, however, showed a technical foul on Butler on the play, for his aggression after Mills’ foul.
DeRozan then converted a technical free throw before Butler then went to the line, missing both foul shots. The Spurs lost their timeout in the process, but gained a point.