Dealing with stress test, Heat has to ‘ figure this out’
Dealing with early stress test, team has to ‘ figure this out’
Adversity l argely was an abstract for last season’s Miami Heat.
There was a 31- 13 start to a regular season that led to the comfort of a 44- 29 finish. Then in the run to the NBA Finals, Erik Spoelstra’s team never trailed in any of the first three rounds.
Now there is the reality of a 3- 4 record and an uneven start that has yet to produce consecutive wins. While the roster largely is the same, with 13 returning players from last season, the results are not.
So even with it early in the pandemic- shortened 72- game regular season, it already has a feel of getting late.
“I mean,” center Bam Adebayo said, “we’re to the point where we got to figure this out before it’s too late.
“We don’t want to build a habit of, ‘ OK, we’ll get the next game. OK, we’ll get the next game.’ Because then we’ll look up and we’re at the eighth seed. We need to fix this situation right now.” Ample challenges await. While a game against the Washington Wizards comes Saturday after t he current two- day break, that matchup opens a trip that continues with a
Sunday game on the second night of a back- to- back against the Boston Celtics and then consecutive games against the Eastern Conference- leading Philadelphia 76ers to conclude the four- game road trip.
“We know what we’ve got to do,” forward Jimmy Butler said after Wednesday night’s 107- 105 loss to the Celtics at AmericanAirlines Arena, a game decided on a Boston putback with
two- tenths of a second to play.
“There’s no excuses to not playing hard and not finishing possessions. We’re not playing the type of basketball that we say we are, the culture that we say we have.
“We ain’t doing that. Nobody is — not me, not Bam, nobody. And I think we’ve got to get back to that.”
There were moments of peak Heat in the loss to Boston, including a 35- 27 advantage in the third quarter and then a 10- 0 run in 56 seconds to tie it at 105- 105 with 13.4 seconds to play.
“If we want to win, that’s how we’re going to have to play,” Butler said. “We’re going to have to get out of the mud, claw, scratch, to get a [ win]. But we better figure it out real soon.”
Those stretches came after the Heat fell behind by 17 in the second quarter.
“We got to play desperate like we did at the end of the fourth and we got in the game — that’s the bottom line,” Adebayo said. “We started the game a little flat. We shouldn’t have to be down [ 17] for us to be like, ‘ OK, it’s time to play.’ We got to come out with that same intensity we had in the last minute of the game.”
The loss marked the first time this season the Heat have opened a game with the same lineup as the previous game, after going with six variations over the first six.
But, Butler said, stability only gets you so far.
“I think anybody that you put out there,” he said, “we’re going to have to compete hard and do what we’re supposed to do, do what we’re asked to do.
“You could put anybody out there [ and] we’re still going to have to box out and chase, get the ball, share the ball and guard. But I don’t think any lineup that he’s put out there yet has done that, rotation or not. We ain’t getting it done.”
Guard Duncan Robinson agreed, particularly with an ankle injury taking Butler out of 2 ½ games previously and the possibility of COVID- 19 leading to further rotation alterations along the way.
“Obviously developing a rapport on offense, in particular, and defense as well, and getting connected helps,” Robinson said. “This is a unique year. We expect the unexpected is what we say. We expect things to change, to be completely different moving forward. Who knows based on this year?
“Obviously, we’re going to have to develop a certain level of consistency, regardless of who is in and out of the lineup.”