The Miami Heat came into Tuesday’s game down a man and they were treated like it.
The Miami Heat came into Tuesday night’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks off a Christmas Day win against the New Orleans Pelicans. One win doesn’t mean anything for the next in the NBA, so while the Miami Heat should have moved on in most ways, there was a bit of carryover from that game to tend to.
As a result of an ankle tweak from the first game of the season, Jimmy Butler missed a large chunk of that game on Christmas Day. That same injury caused him to miss this game on Tuesday night.
There really wasn’t ever any semblance of competition on Tuesday night. The Milwaukee Bucks came out, jumped on the Miami Heat, and never took their feet off of the gas.
The Miami Heat were taken to the woodshed on Tuesday night.
The Miami Heat didn’t help themselves either as they turned the ball over way more than they can if they plan to win big this season. On pace for 48 of them with six at the midway point of the first quarter, they would finish with 10 in that period, which was on pace for 40 and still not nearly good enough.
While they would only finish with 22 turnovers in total, the damage had already been done. The Miami Heat’s ineptitude as far as maintaining possession of the ball was only dramatically more represented by the fact that Bucks couldn’t miss on Tuesday night.
They almost tied an NBA record in the first half for threes made but decided to convert a two-point basket with the time running out instead. How generous of them.
The Miami Heat were defeated by a score of 97-144, 47 points, in other words. Luckily and perhaps even unluckily, for them, they face this very same team again on Wednesday night.
It remains to be seen if Jimmy Butler will give it a go in that contest, but this Miami Heat team should surely be motivated. If getting beat like this doesn’t do it, then it can’t be done.