After coming toe to toe with the defending champions in the Golden State Warriors, a few nights ago, the very next day the Miami Heat (25-30) fall five games below .500 as they were handled by the Denver Nuggets (38-18) 103-87.
Prior to this dreadful Miami Heat season, people were expecting the Denver Nuggets to have a breakout year, and they aren’t disappointing, as they are 2nd seed in the West behind the aforementioned Warriors. The last time the two-faced off is when the Nuggets visited South Beach where they took the victory in a close one, 103-99, where dynamic center Nikola Jokic recorded a triple-double (29 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists).
Jokic again took care of business with a double-double (23 points, 12 rebounds), but really, the Denver Nuggets didn’t have a sensational offensive night. It all came down to the question of: Can the Heat keep up with the Nuggets? Yes and no.
It was basically a tale of two halves for the Miami Heat, as they kept up with Denver in the first half. However, the Heat had a disastrous third quarter which inevitably led to the Nuggets stretching the lead. Via the Sun Sentinel, we got a more illuminating review of this game from Head Coach Erik Spoelstra.
"“We got disorganized offensively and that led to some run-outs,” Head coach Erik Spoelstra said in the post-game conference. “Five of eight possession turned into transition threes or breaks out of our inefficient offense. That was probably the biggest thing. Every time we made a little bit of a run, they created more separation.”"
It’s been one of the common themes for the Heat, but two things really stood out from the game and the box score, once again, they committed 19 turnovers which lead to 21 points for Denver, and Miami’s three-point field goal percentage was poor as they shot 27.3 percent from the arc.
No one for Miami really got going on offense, especially after the Warriors game where players like Josh Richardson (37 points, 8 three-pointers made) and Justise Winslow (22 points, 6 rebounds, 4 assists) had stellar nights.
But the Heat evidently looked like a team that was experiencing a series of back to back games, especially in the second half as they failed to reach 90 points overall. However, Spoelstra feels that the Heat are heading to a good place.
“I think we need to stick to the process of what we’re doing right,” Spoelstra said. “We’re trending in the right direction, really making strides in a lot of areas.”
The Miami Heat will finally get a day of rest as they try to bounce back against the Dallas Mavericks (26-30) in Texas on Wednesday at 8:30 PM Eastern.