The Miami Heat host the Portland Trail Blazers and their old friend Hassan Whiteside on Sunday. What does NBA 2K20 have to say about the matchup?
Sunday, January 5th marks the return of the prodigal son Hassan Whiteside to American Airlines Arena when the Portland Trail Blazers look to challenge the Miami Heat at home. Damian Lillard and company look to hand the Heat just their second loss of the season at home while trying to solve their own issues of sitting at ninth in the Western Conference.
Our Miami Heat prediction series has hit a little bit of a rough patch as the team couldn’t defeat the Washington Wizards nor the Orlando Magic this week. Once again, coach Erik Spoelstra’s rotation is short, with James Johnson and Dion Waiters getting no minutes even when these games are out of hand. Heat Nation also has to listen to the back-to-back excuse again after the team lost big time to Orlando on Friday night.
Just after I did the simulation, Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel reported that Justise Winslow’s injury status had been upgraded to questionable ahead of the matchup against Portland. While this is cause for some excitement among the fans since his defensive presence alone will be a huge help to a squad struggling in that department, I think that exuberance should be tapered as he probably won’t be playing in this game either. For our purposes, he will remain out of simulations until he actually plays minutes with the Heat.
Justise Winslow (lower-back bone bruise) has been upgraded to questionable for Sunday against the visiting Trail Blazers. He has missed the last 14 games.
— Ira Winderman (@IraHeatBeat) January 4, 2020
The Trail Blazers are another team riddled with injuries as Jusuf Nurkic, Zach Collins, Rodney Hood, and Skal Labissiere remain out for Portland. The team is seemingly doing the best it can with the card they’ve been dealt, but that just hasn’t equaled wins. I can’t lie to you, I used to be excited to watch Blazers games, but now whenever I see them on League Pass, I tune in for a few possessions and I just can’t take it, I have to move on to a different game.
I expanded the Heat’s rotation to 11 players and continued to distribute the minutes to mimic the action each player saw during Friday night’s loss against the Orlando magic. Afterward, I headed over to the coaching tab and moved up Coach Spoelstra’s run zone tendency from five percent to 50-percent. I also changed Bam Adebayo’s secondary position to power forward since Meyers Leonard’s positions look that way. Lastly, I edited Tyler Herro, Jimmy Butler, and Adebayo’s vitals to allow them to initiate the offense.
Since the predictions haven’t been up to par lately, I decided to do what Philadelphia 76ers head coach Brett Brown won’t do. Make Adjustments. I changed the MyLeague settings to include fatigue carrying over from game to game since clearly, this is an issue for Miami that results in lethargic losses on the second night of back-to-backs. I then moved the fatigue rate from the default 50 down to 25 for now to get a feel for how severely NBA 2K thinks a player should be affected by fatigue.
I usually don’t edit the opposing teams scoring options in the coaches game plan settings, but for this matchup, it’s pretty clear Portland wants to score through Lillard, CJ McCollum, and Carmelo Anthony. With that being said, I adjusted the scoring options to reflect the order listed above.
If you want to see the simulation for yourself, check out the latest video on my YouTube channel. There I’ll be providing real-time analysis during the simulation as well as showing you the adjustments I made. Leave a comment to let me know you visited the video.
Starting Lineups
Portland Trail Blazers
Point guard, Damian Lillard
Shooting guard, CJ McCollum
Small forward, Kent Bazemore
Power forward, Carmelo Anthony
Center, Hassan Whiteside
Miami Heat
Point guard, Kendrick Nunn
Shooting guard, Duncan Robinson
Small forward, Jimmy Butler
Power forward, Bam Adebayo
Center, Meyers Leonard
Outcome
Welp, the fatigue setting definitely worked. The Heat started out strong, dropping a cool 34 points in both the first and the second quarters. Adebayo was leading the charge with 17 points in the first half to go along with 6 boards and 4 assists. Duncan Robinson was right behind him with 14 on 6-for-8 shooting while only taking (and making) one 3-pointer. While the first half was exciting, the score was close, and the Heat had more work to do with a halftime lead of 68-62.
The third quarter was a straight shootout. Although the Heat took the quarter 31-29, they were headed into the fourth only up by four points. Could they do it, or will the fatigue monster come back to bite them late in the game?
Finally, it was winning time in South Beach… for the Trail Blazers. Portland started the quarter on a 15-3 run to take an eight-point lead with 6:07 remaining. Let that sink in. The Heat only scored three points in half a quarter. Maybe fatigue is setting in. Eventually, Miami was able to get to with two points, but the Blazers never gave up the lead after that huge run. Blazers went on the defeat the Heat 122-116, with Miami only able to muster up 19 points in the fourth quarter.
Player stats
Miami Heat
Duncan Robinson – 26 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 block
Bam Adebayo – 24 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 steals, 4 blocks
Jimmy Butler – 12 points (5/16), 5 rebounds, 8 assists, 1 steal
Tyler Herro – 12 points (5/15), 6 rebounds, 2 assists
Goran Dragic – 11 points (4/11), 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal
Portland Trail Blazers
CJ McCollum – 24 points, 1 rebound, 2 assists, 2 blocks
Damian Lillard – 21 points, 7 rebounds, 8 assists, 1 steal
Kent Bazemore – 18 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 3 blocks
Hassan Whiteside – 18 points, 23 rebounds, 5 blocks
Carmelo Anthony – 11 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists
The Heat lose a close one after faltering in the third quarter. Bam Adebayo did literally everything for the team with some help from Robinson, but it wasn’t enough. Whiteside flourished in his first visit back to Miami. While both sides were cautious with the ball, there’s no way the Heat could expect to get blocked 12 times and still win. Of course, Heat Nation hopes the prediction is wrong, but we’ll have to wait until game time to find out.