The Miami Heat came out against the Los Angeles Clippers like they wanted to win the game. The ball was popping from player to player, they were moving around, and the offense looked totally crisp as a complete unit.
They even got off to a great start when it came to shooting the ball. It seemed as though the return of Tyler Herro to the Heat lineup was paying off and set to continue paying more of the major dividends that it had to open the game.
Then it happened.
The Miami Heat ran out of offensive fuel at the wrong, yet a crucial, point in the game Thursday.
The Los Angeles Clippers started to heat up themselves. Where they had opened the game shooting as bad as the Heat had shot on Wednesday against Denver, they started to find it near the end of the first half of ball.
They didn’t completely overtake things or set themselves that far apart at that point, the game was still completely even entering half number two. It was then that the Clippers took over.
They were fueled, in part, by Nicolas Batum and his long range shooting. He arguably had his best game in the last few seasons on Thursday.
The Miami Heat did get Tyler Herro back, as we mentioned and he looked extremely good in his return. As we also mentioned and on top of his own raw production, you really like the impact he has and had on others as far as their ability to be better at their own offense.
The Miami Heat need to get healthy. It’s really that simple at this point.
We thought that they would get Jimmy Butler back on Thursday as well, but that didn’t happen. They won’t be completely whole until both Jimmy and Goran Dragic are back in the lineup though and we can’t wait until the day where we can say we have seen them play more than two weeks of basktetball, consistently, as a whole unit.
Again, until that day, we don’t know what we have. On Thursday though, the Miami Heat had it for a while and then they didn’t, as they ran out of offensive gas at the wrong points in the game.