Not broken at the break, but Heat still have ‘work to do’

With the standings locked in place for over two months, the enduring vantage point is a record 17 games above .500 and the No. 4 playoff seed in the Eastern Conference.

But at the moment of the NBA shutdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, there also were doubts entering the Miami Heat’s equation.

That, forward Jae Crowder said this week, is why there has to be hope for a sharpened focus at a potential NBA restart.

“We were looking forward to the playoffs a little bit and we lost our last game to a non-playoff opponent,” Crower said of the March 11 loss to the Charlotte Hornets at AmericanAirlines Arena, the Heat’s last game before the league’s stoppage.

“Sometimes we would overlook an

opponent. I just felt like we knew in our head where we wanted to go, but we had work to do.”

Crowder offered his comments on SportsCenter’s Instagram Live in an interview with ESPN’s Richard Jefferson, the former NBA forward. He spoke of that defeat against the lottery-bound Hornets and the two losses in the Heat’s last three games before the break as missteps by an otherwise confident team.

It is why he said the hope was to utilize what was to be the final month of the regular season to prepare for the postseason.

“We had a couple of weeks to prepare for this playoff run, and it was all championship talk,” Crowder said. “And it was nothing less than that.

“Here, it goes to the organization, and what Pat [Riley] has done is he’s created that championship environment. Everything is geared to just being the best, being the top, being [at] the top of the league.

“So we wanted to come out of the East, no doubt. I felt like with that being our goal, we were definitely going to give it a good shot. I think we had a good chance of doing so.”

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told the NBA Board of Governors last week that it could be June before a decision is made on whether it is possible to resume the season. And while the playoffs likely will follow the traditional format — albeit without fans, likely at a neutral site — this is no guarantee of even a nominal amount of additional regular-season games before such a postseason.

For Crowder, that will mean fast-tracking his adjustment, with the Heat 7-8 since he, Andre Iguodala and Solomon Hill were acquired from the Memphis Grizzlies in the deal at the Feb. 6 NBA trade deadline that sent out Justise Winslow, James Johnson and Dion Waiters.

Crowder said he still believes the newcomers can be difference-makers.

“When I first got here,” he said, “it was like basically they had it going, but a couple of pieces were missing. I just felt like we were those pieces. And from there on, I felt like it was our duty to just be veterans.

“They just want us to be veterans and play how we want, not change anything, just help these young guys and show them a style of play to win. And I mean it was very easy for me to come and just play basketball ’cause that’s all they were doing: playing basketball, playing hard.”

Still, that loss to Charlotte was the first time Crowder and Iguodala had played with Tyler Herro. The Heat’s 2019 firstround pick out of Kentucky had been sidelined by ankle soreness since Feb. 5.

To Crowder, the opportunity for cohesion remains, especially, he said, with the way coach Erik Spoelstra has brought the team together.

“It was something we talked about each and every day,” Crowder said of making a deep playoff run and getting prepared for such a run. “Every game, we talked about playing for something. I told Spo he does a great job motivating us for a regular-season game. You know how hard it is to motivate a team sometimes for a regular-season game, especially when we’re getting close to the end of the season?”