Miami Heat: Why Thursday’s Milwaukee Bucks defeat is still key moving forward

The Miami Heat were defeated by the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday evening. There is still something key to take away there.

The Miami Heat suffered a tough defeat at the hands of the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday. They were without two of there three best players in Jimmy Butler and Goran Dragic and while they were up 23 points at one point in the game, is the loss really that surprising?

No, it isn’t. It isn’t a surprise because the Bucks are supposed to be the better team when the Miami Heat are missing two of their biggest guns, but you do feel a certain type of way as again, the Heat blew a 23 point lead.

In any event, the Miami Heat lost the game and that we must live with, however, that doesn’t mean that it was all bad. Here’s what I mean.

The reason that the Miami Heat were able to get out to such a massive lead in the first place is because of what they were able to do with Giannis Antetokounmpo in the first half. Although he scored a total of 14 points and was shooting %70 percent from the field as a whole, he was a -14 in the first half.

Although the Miami Heat were beaten, Thursday’s defeat is still key moving forward.

What this means is that for as good as he is an individual player, his team was 14 points worse when he was on the floor. What this boils down to is the difficulty he had in finding quality looks.

His overall quality was good, by the time each sequence was all said and done, but the massive amounts of work he had to do to get those looks was still a victory for the Heat. Not only that, but the factors that caused his looks to be so difficult also semi-illustrate a Miami Heat win. 

At times, the Miami Heat perfectly executed the formation of a wall that Giannis either couldn’t or had to spend extra time and effort to penetrate. They did that so well in the first half that it helped them get out to an, as mentioned, 23 point lead.

I believe that with Jimmy Butler’s mental fortitude and toughness in the second half, to go along with the hot-handed on-court spark that Goran Dragic would have provided, that this Miami Heat team could have not only finished the deal on yesterday but are fully capable of beating this Milwaukee Bucks team 4/7 games if it comes down to that.

I fully believe that and I will have to see the Bucks beat Miami two or three times in a row to think otherwise, as because even with yesterday’s victory, they are still but only 1-2 against the Heat this year and one of those earlier losses was to a Jimmy Butlerless Heat team as well.

That is why I believe that Thursday’s Milwaukee Bucks defeat is still a key moving forward and only in a good way for Miami.