Heat blows big lead in 3rd quarter, falls to lowly Hornets
The Heat’s best stretch of the season has been defined by its ability to take care of business against inferior and short-handed teams.
But the Heat (28-23) couldn’t keep it going on Sunday afternoon, falling to the struggling Charlotte Hornets 122-117 at Spectrum Center to kick off an important fourgame trip. The Hornets (15-36) entered the game tied with the San Antonio Spurs for the NBA’s third-worst record.
Sunday marked just the Heat’s eighth loss in the last 24 games after a rough 12-15 start to the season.
“It’s tough in this league to strive to be great and to commit to that requires a big time collective commitment and that leads to consistency,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said following the defeat. “These are tough lessons for our ball club. I see a path for our team to be great, but it’s going to require much more consistency night in and night out to develop that reliability.”
The Heat looked to be on its way to another win, pulling ahead by 13 points with 8:32 left in the third quarter.
“What happened after that was not great,” Spoelstra said.
That’s when the Hornets swung the momentum to their side, closing the third quarter with a huge 32-14 run to end the period ahead of the Heat 91-86.
The Hornets continued their run by beginning the fourth quarter on a 17-10 spurt to extend their lead to 12 points with 5:54 to play.
The Heat then responded with a run of its own, scoring 10 quick unanswered points to cut the deficit to two with 3:51 left.
That was the closest the Heat got, as the Hornets came back to score the next six points to push their lead back up to eight with 1:51 to remaining and put the game away.
“We let them get in the flow,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “When you have them down 10, that’s when we’re supposed to go for the kill in a sense and just put them away. But we coasted around and let them get back in the game and they got in a rhythm.”
The Heat’s defense has been among the NBA’s best this season, but struggled against a Hornets team that entered with the league’s
worst offensive rating.
Charlotte totaled 122 points while shooting an efficient 54.2 percent from the field, including 15 of 40 (37.5 percent) from three-point range, despite committing 19 turnovers.
The Hornets were led by guard Terry Rozier, who finished with a gamehigh 31 points, to go with six rebounds and seven assists.. He was one of three players on Charlotte’s roster who scored 20 or more points on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Adebayo (17 points, four rebounds and six assists), Jimmy Butler (28 points, seven rebounds and two assists) and Tyler Herro (24 points, five rebounds and three assists) combined for 69 points on 56 percent shooting from the field. The rest of the Heat’s roster scored 48 points on 39.5 percent shooting from the field.
The Heat continues the trip on Tuesday against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
THIS AND THAT
The Heat continues to be among the NBA’s best at forcing turnovers, which is helping to inject life into its struggling offense.
Miami entered Sunday with the NBA’s secondhighest opponent turnover rate (percentage of opponent possessions that end
in a turnover) at 17 percent this season. As a result, the Heat has scored an average of 18.9 points per game off turnovers this season, which is the sixth-most in the league.
“We’re at our best without a doubt when we’re making plays, scrambling around, making multiple efforts, speeding teams up and at times putting two on the ball and then rotating
in passing lanes and then getting deflections,” Spoelstra said. “It’s a little bit different than some other Miami Heat teams that we’ve had.”
The NBA announced Saturday the Heat has been fined $25,000 “for failing to comply with league policies governing injury reporting.”
Butler was not on the Heat’s injury report before
the team announced he would miss Tuesday’s matchup against the Celtics about an hour before tipoff because of lower back tightness.
This marks the second time this season that the Heat has been fined for violating the league’s injury reporting rules.
The only Heat players ruled out of Sunday’s game against the Hornets were Jamal Cain (G League), Nikola Jovic (lower back stress reaction), Duncan Robinson (finger surgery) and Omer Yurtseven (ankle surgery).
All four players did not travel with the Heat to Charlotte for the start of the four-game trip.