The Miami Heat finished an unsuccessful road trip on Wednesday, going 1-4 across the five games. Here are the three main takeaways from the escapade.
The Miami Heat have been absolutely outstanding at home this season, something that has propelled them into the conversation of contention in this season’s title talks. Where they have been less than mediocre for the most part, however, is on the road. Among other reasons, that is why doing well on this five-game road trip that was completed in Utah on Wednesday would have been a welcomed sight to everybody that supports the Heat.
Unfortunately for the team and all the rest of us, they finished the five-game trip with a record of 1-4, only taking their game in San Francisco against the Golden State Warriors. While they had chances to win some of, if not all of the rest of the games, they ultimately weren’t able to pull any of the others out in the end. Here are three takeaways from the Miami Heat’s trip.
The road woes are real
The Miami Heat own a record of 35-18, with 22 of those wins coming at home and only 13 of them on the road. While on the surface you can see that this makes them a much better team at home rather than on the road, diving into the numbers would point you towards the fact that it isn’t their offense that seems to fail them, yet it has to be their defense.
Their offensive numbers practically mirror each other at home and away, but their points scored tend to be higher though, which could point to a need to score more to keep up with or account for those that have been allowed to the other team. Regardless of the reasoning why, how, or anything else, it is something that needs to be looked into. When the playoffs arrive, the Heat will have to play at least almost half of any given series on the road, so they would be best served as to dive into the issues there.
Opponents three-pointers were what did this trip in
In today’s NBA especially, a common saying has been “you live by the three, you die by the three”. On this road trip, it was definitely the latter for the Miami Heat.
They have hit their fair share of three-pointers, but they gave up way too many across these last five games. Through the five games played, they gave up a total of 87 three-pointers made, with a whopping 24 of them coming in the first game against the Clippers.
If you take an average of those four games, that comes out to be 17.4 made three-pointers given up per contest. When you look at the league average for this season, that number is only at 12 per game.
That is insane. The Miami Heat cannot allow other teams to shoot that well from distance, no matter what the circumstances are. That is a recipe to get you beat every time.
Health
This one is really out of anyone’s control but is definitely noteworthy. The Miami Heat missed Tyler Herro and Meyers Leonard.
Reports were conflicting as recent as Wednesday evening on Herro’s All-Star weekend participation, but as long as he’s back to his regular team duties after the break, that’s all that matters. Meyers Leonard’s size was missed as at least somewhat of a deterrent to the basket and for depth purposes.
The new additions really helped, but the guys that were missing are so intertwined within the fabric of what makes this Heat team tick at this point, it’s bound not to work right without them. Hopefully, everyone will be back to full strength once the break comes and is gone.
The Miami Heat, just like every other team, will get the time between here and next Thursday off for the All-Star festivities. They need it and hopefully will put it to good use, rest and strategy-wise. They’ll be right back at it next Thursday against the Atlanta Hawks.