Grading the Miami Heat after their victory over the Milwaukee Bucks

The Miami Heat came into Monday night’s game on edge as they got set to face the league-leading Bucks. How would they fare in what was to be a tough test?

The Miami Heat came out on Monday like men on a mission. They were in control of the game from the beginning to end and even when it seemed as though Milwaukee wanted to take control of it, the Heat quickly made the plays to regain control of the game.

Typically, the best way to dole out grades in a postgame scenario would be to do it by player or to give them for certain players. That is not the best way to do things here and we will take a different approach. Here are the grades from this Miami Heat victory.

Miami Heat Team Defense – A+

The Miami Heat were brick walls of defense on Monday night. Not only did they do superb individual jobs on Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, but they also held the Bucks team to 89 points or almost 32 points below their season average of 119.6 points per game.

When looking at their defense on the certain individuals mentioned, they were just as impressive. They held the man that accomplished a 40-20 game just a day earlier, to 13 measly points and 15 boards, a decent rebounding game but a very poor scoring performance from the Greek Freak. They held the Bucks’ second-best player and second-leading scorer in Middleton to just 12 points on 4-16 shooting and 2-10 from deep.

Their leading scorer was Brook Lopez with 21 points, but no other Bucks player scored more than 13. That’s why the Miami Heat’s team defense received a grade of A+.

Miami Heat Shot-Making– A+

Over the past few seasons and over the last few games of this season, where it appeared that the Miami Heat may be in a slump, their offense has been questioned. They nixed that talk on Monday night by coming out and shooting the lights out.

They shot almost 50 percent from deep as a team, going 18-37 from distance. If there were questions about if they could sustain and/or regain the hot shooting that has gotten them here thus far on the season, then Monday night should have gone a long way towards answering those questions. They got shots from the darndest guys too, not really, but that’s the perfect segue into our next sub-group of grades.

Miami Heat Others– A+

Every good team is only as good as their numbers 3-9 guys are. Your top two guys are going to be just that, giving you about the same thing on a night to night basis, but it’s those other guys that separate the winning teams from the losing teams.

The Miami Heat have gotten their fair share of contributions from everyone outside of Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler this year and Monday was no different. Three different guys stepped up in a major way though and it seems as though they took shifts doing it.

Kelly Olynyk got it going good early on, letting the Heat ride him for what amounted to one heck of a flurry by the skilled big man. Jae Crowder was the next to get going, carrying the Miami Heat through what seemed like the middle section of the game on the back of his 5-9 from deep shooting performance.

Lastly, was a familiar culprit for the crime.  Goran Dragic got it going about mid-way through the third quarter and never turned it off.

Olynyk finished with 11 points, a rebound, and two assists, while Crowder finished with 18 points, four rebounds, and four assists. Dragic finished with 15 points, four rebounds, and four assists.

This makes 16, 19, and 15 points for The Dragon across the last three for the Heat, three very huge games for them. He is a huge reason why the Miami Heat others received such high marks.

This was a great win for the Miami Heat and especially off of the recent stretch they’ve been on. They have beaten Milwaukee twice this season, on both occasions that they have faced each other and it has to feel good for Coach Spo and the squad. They get a day off before facing inter-state rivals, the Orlando Magic, who are always a tough out for Heat and we can’t wait!