Miami Heat: Even in defeat, there’s a huge positive to take from LA game
The Miami Heat closed a three-game West Coast road trip Friday in a game against the LA Lakers. Although defeated, there’s good that can be taken away here.
The Miami Heat found themselves facing the Los Angeles Lakers on the second night and backend of a back to back series of games on Friday. Did we mention it was the second night of a back to back set?
This is important to remember here because it showed on the court. The Miami Heat started the game sluggishly, going down by double digits very early on in the game. They would make a run to close the gap before the first quarter ended.
It was really a back and forth low scoring effort for most of the game between the two teams until the Lakers started to sink more baskets around the middle of the fourth. This eventually became too much for the Heat to handle, to which they eventually went down to the Lakers by a score of 80-95.
Both teams really shot the ball poorly, but the Lakers found a way to make more shots when they counted, while the Heat were just really bad for most of the night offensively. There was one period deep in the third quarter where if you looked at the stats, you would have seen that both teams were shooting a combined 7/43 from downtown, yea, around a whopping 16 percent from the three-point stripe.
The Miami Heat were especially bad from downtown and almost as bad from the field in general. They shot 6-35 from deep for a 17.1 three-point percentage on the night and 28-80 from the field in general for a 35 percent overall shooting percentage as a unit. The only player on the team to sink multiple three’s was Goran Dragic, who sank three of them, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the way he had it going in Phoenix on Thursday.
While you would have loved for the Miami Heat to win this game, especially with the chance to stick it to LeBron, this was just not their night. There is something good that can be taken from this game though.
Outside of their poor shooting, which I know is a crucial part of winning ball games, the Miami Heat were decent everywhere else. This matters here because they were facing arguably the best and hottest team in the league right now.
While the Lakers have scored over 100 points in most of their games this season, the Heat joined the Utah Jazz as the only other team to hold them under 100 points. Both teams only allowed 95, which sounds like a lot but isn’t in today’s NBA and especially considering that they have gone over the century mark in six of eight games.
The main thing of note here is the fact that the Heat stuck close right up until the end, while you would like to believe they may have had a good chance to take this one on the Lakers’ home floor had they been able to hit just a few more shots. Shots aren’t going to fall every night, this is true, but the Heat aren’t going to be this bad shooting the ball on most nights either.
That is the positive here. The Miami Heat had their worst offensive night of the season and possibly one of the worst they may have all year, but they still kept it close. It got away from them at the end, with the end results making things look more lopsided than they actually were.
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The Miami Heat will be better than this offensively on most nights and based on this performance, they aren’t that far behind the Lakers as a team, if even behind them at all. The shots will fall on their next meeting, this can be promised. Either way, it is now on to the Detroit Pistons, who walk into American Airlines Arena on Tuesday.