Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Depth enhances late-game options
Martin emerges, Strus works toward return
DENVER — In the end, the injury absence of Max Strus provided the Miami Heat with a net gain, with the fill-in contributions of Caleb Martin as a defense stopper. Now the Heat are getting Strus back, as well.
The upshot is the ability to have the option of offense/defense substitutions in tight late-game situations.
Strus was back on the court with the Heat for Monday’s shootaround, ahead of the game against the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena, after initial thought was that the strained left knee sustained on Oct. 30 would have him out at least two weeks.
“Obviously he has a history with that knee,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Strus having sat out a calendar year until last December, after tearing his ACL while with the Chicago Bulls. “We were very fortunate. He’s had some really good days of treatment and some work.
“So we’ll just keep on progressing.”
In Strus’ absence, Martin stepped in to provide wing deterrence, including during the decisive closing stages of Saturday night’s 118-115 victory over the Utah Jazz at FTX Arena.
“He gave us very good minutes in that game, and I also thought it was important for him to be able to finish and play some key situational moments for us, so everybody can build more confidence,” Spoelstra said of Martin, the thirdyear veteran who is on a two-way contract. “He can gain more confidence, the team can gain more confidence in him. We have a deep roster that we trust.
“It was just a few games back when Max was that guy, finishing a game for us down the stretch. But you want to build that full team experience in a lot of different situations. I think that was really important.”
Challenging challenge: Spoelstra on Monday touched on the NBA’s shift to out-of-bounds calls in the final two-minutes now being available for video review only with a coach’s challenge.
That left Spoelstra in a tough spot late in Saturday’s victory. With 1:47 left and his team up six, Spoelstra successfully challenged an offensive foul called on Heat forward Jimmy Butler. The Heat won that challenge, regained the timeout spent, but, by rule, did not retain their lone challenge.
Then, with 13 seconds left and the Heat up three, the NBA ruled in its postgame officiating review that Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell should have been called for stepping out of bounds while being initially defended by Kyle Lowry. Instead, Mitchell passed to center Rudy Gobert for a dunk with 11.5 seconds left that made it a one-point game.
“Every time it goes out of bounds everybody’s going to have a disagreement about it,” Spoelstra said Monday. “And certainly our bench thought it did go [out], but there was nothing we could at that point. And there’s no perfect science with this challenge.”
The ruling in the NBA’s LastTwo Minute report read, “Mitchell (UTA) regains possession after the dislodge by Lowry (MIA) and dribbles the ball on the baseline out of bounds before his gather.”
One remedy would be returning a successful challenge, as is the case in the NFL.
“There’s a lot of rabbit holes you can go down,” Spoelstra said. “That’s one of them, for sure.”
The 3 theories: Spoelstra said the Heat still are working to find their sweet spot when it comes to 3-point attempts.
For example, in Thursday night’s home loss to the Boston Celtics, the Heat attempted 41. Then, the following game, in the victory over the Jazz, the attempts were down to 21. The Heat made nine against the Celtics, 11 against the Jazz.
“As long as we’re getting the right ones,” Spoelstra said of the attempts. “I think overall we were pretty efficient [Saturday] night. It depends on who you’re playing, what is available. And you have to have an idea where your strengths are. Are you getting to your strengths enough? And then adjust accordingly.”