Observations and other notes of interest from Tuesday night’s 114-98 victory over the Golden State Warriors:
– There was no pretense in this one.
– The Heat and Warriors know they need to be better.
– The Warriors entered 18-17, the Heat at 17-17.
– Now the Heat are 18-17, the Warriors 18-18.
– With Heat coach Erik Spoelstra acknowledging his team very much remains stuck in the middle.
– “You have a top-of-the-food-chain league right now, and then you have everyone else. And then you have the teams that are playing for lottery picks,” Spoelstra said ahead of Tuesday night’s game, “But everyone else … we’re all trying to figure it out. There’s a bunch of us, in both conferences, that are in that same middling area.”
– “Middling.”
– It has come to that for the, “Hardest-working, best-conditioned …”
– You get it.
– “We’ll get a breakthrough,” Spoelstra said. “This is a savage league, so I don’t know when it’s going to be. What you try to do is stack as many winning habits, winning days, winning connections where this group is coming together. And I feel like we are.”
– This one certainly was a step in that direction.
– Spoelstra continued, “We’re checking a lot of the intangibles, but now there’s some things that we certainly have to do better from an execution standpoint that we’re working through right now.”
– So onward on this six-game western swing.
– With the Jazz up next on Thursday night.
– Which, if the Heat are who Spoelstra wants them to be, would be a payback game.
– After opening with Nikola Jovic in Saturday night’s blowout loss to the Jazz, Spoelstra for the second consecutive game opened with Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro, Terry Rozier, Haywood Highsmith and Jaime Jaquez Jr.
– Highsmith opened defensively on Stephen Curry.
– Kel’el Ware was first off the Heat bench.
– With Jovic following to join Ware in their power partnership.
– And then Duncan Robinson.
– With the appearance, Robinson tied Joel Anthony (382) for 14th place on the Heat all-time regular-season appearance list, now two games shy of Chris Bosh for 13th.
– Alec Burks, who was held out Monday night in Sacramento, followed for nine deep for the Heat.
– The Heat then opened the second period with the unlikely unit of Ware, Jovic, Robinson, Rozier and Burks.
– That had Pelle Larsson out of the rotation.
– As Kevin Love again looked on.
– Before Tuesday night’s game, Spoelstra reflected on Monday night’s double-overtime loss in Sacramento, when the Heat blew a 17-point fourth-quarter lead.
– “We’ve had five of these really close games with this locker room,” he said. “We had a really tough loss in Detroit. We had a really tough one obviously in Orlando, a tough one last night. And we’ve had two great games where we responded, the second Orlando game and then in Houston. These are great learning points for our group.”
– Spoelstra and Warriors coach Steve Kerr spoke pregame about Adebayo’s role on Team USA’s gold-medal team at the Paris Games last summer, with Kerr coach of that team and Spoelstra an assistant.
– “I just told our staff in the meeting, everybody should be lucky enough to coach Bam,” Kerr said. “This guy is just an amazing pro. His work ethic, his intelligence, his energy and then ultimately his dedication to the team and to the cause. His approach, he’s so professional and just an absolute joy to coach.”
– Said Spoelstra, “This summer was probably the most enjoyable, just in terms of I was able to develop a different relationship with him, a lot less stress. There was a lot of pressure, but it wasn’t a head coach-player relationship. It was assistant coach, more of a friend type relationship. That was so much fun and something I’ll treasure the rest of my career.”
– Herro extended his career-best streak of games scoring in double figures to 65. His previous high was 38 in a row.
– Herro extended his career best streak of games with at least one 3-pointer to 69, tying Duncan Robinson’s franchise record.
– Herro also has now converted a 3-pointer in the season’s first 35 games, having previously broken the longest such Heat 3-pointer streak to open a season, of 28 set in 1998-99 by Tim Hardaway.
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