Miami Heat lost the one that they were most likely to win against Washington

The Miami Heat were not good enough for an entire games worth of minutes on Wednesday night. Though most indicated by the final score, a Washington win, the first half scoring isn’t a bad one to look at either.

The Miami Heat took a 10 point lead into halftime, 65-55. Even still and being outscored 17-22 in the third quarter, they took a five point lead into the fourth.

It was there where things began to fall off the rails. The Wizards, Bradley Beal doing a ton of the heavy lifting, began to hit shots while the Miami Heat couldn’t get anything to go right.

The same things that had seemed to work all game long weren’t working at that point. This is mainly in reference to the Jimmy Butler drive game.

He would either get fouled or find a way to convert for most of the game, but he couldn’t in the closing moments of the fourth quarter against Washington on Wednesday. Here’s what makes this defeat an awfully horrible one though.

The Miami Heat lost to a Wizards team playing without Russell Westbrook.

On top of the fact that the Wizards are arguably the worst team in the league, depending on which metric you use, they were without one of their top two guys in Russell Westbrook. How do you, a fully healthy Heat team for the most part, allow this team to beat you without Russell Westbrook in the lineup for them?

It’s literally mindbogling. This was the game that they were supposed to win, the one without a future Hall Of Famer playing for the other team.

You say “this was the one”, as the Miami Heat face off against this Wizards squad again on Friday. Westbrook didn’t play Wednesday because it occurred on the second night of back to back games and for injury management purposes, he doesn’t suit up in those circumstances.

If the Miami Heat couldn’t’ beat this version of Washington, they’ll definitely have their hands full on Friday. Again, this was the version they were supposed to beat.