Miami Heat: They hit the NOS too early in, 127-113, loss to Mavericks

The Miami Heat came out on Tuesday like world beaters. Without Jimmy Butler, due to non-covid flu-like symptoms, without Tyler Herro due to the foot, and without Victor Oladipo, still, due to his knee injury, they appeared as though they might just be able to get it done against Luka Doncic and the Mavericks without them.

They came out riding the hot hand of Trevor Ariza, who opened the game for Miami going 3-3 from deep. Duncan Robinson proceeded to score their fourth shot, another three that gave the Heat a quick 12 points.

They even finished the period looking magnificent. Where the Mavericks were only able to score 30 points of their own in the first, that was minimized by the nearly 40 that the Heat were able to score, 39 to be precise.

Then, the rest of the game happened. The Mavericks didn’t have another quarter that was as bad as the first, as even with the point less than that they scored in the fourth, 29 total, the game was out of hand by that time and they had already did all that they needed to do to put Miami away.

The Miami Heat came out on fire Tuesday, but they cooled off quickly and never got back.

On the other side, the Miami Heat only scored 15 in the second. Yea, you read that right.

After a nearly 40 point quarter, they turned around and couldn’t even manage half of that. They only scored 23 in the third, being outscored 68-38 in the second and third periods by the Mavericks and that will always get you beat.

A lot of buzz seemed to emanate from Coach Erik Spoelstra’s decision to double Luka Doncic. The fact of the matter is that when you are dealing with a superstar of the highest proportion, as Doncic already is and when he’s making the shots that he had already shown you he could make over your best defender, then you have to throw two at him.

Yes, at that point, does your defense has to be better and work harder to get out to shooters because you know they have a good chance of finding an open guy? Yes, they do.

However, you have to do what you have to do in order to keep the different guy from obliterating you. It comes down to this, would you rather take your chances this way or lose by giving up a fiddy-piece to Luka?

That is the question. Though worth a mention, it isn’t the topic right now and that’s because you have to accept that this is who Bam is right now, he only had 10 shot attempts on the night.

For perspective, every other starter besides Andre Iguodala had more and Goran Dragic, who plays off the pine, had 14. Again and at this point, we can’t expect him to be someone he isn’t yet… or more terrifying, might not ever be.

Let’s hope Jimmy can get better over the next two days, as the Miami Heat have another game against the Minnesota Timberwolves then. While they should be able to beat them, there’s always that game from a week or so ago on the road trip where they didn’t, so there’s that.

This wasn’t a pretty one, but they must move on. That’s probably the best thing for everyone at this point.