The Miami Heat came into Thursday night’s win over the Detroit Pistons with a few things on their mind. They still weren’t whole, as Jimmy Butler, P.J. Tucker, Caleb Martin, and of course, Bam Adebayo continued to remain out.
While Adebayo is still recovering from surgery, Tucker’s leg injury is still sort of fresh, and Martin needs time to get his conditioning back together after his absence, one would imagine, there was a hope that they could potentially get Jimmy Butler back.
It wasn’t to be on Thursday evening though and it appeared that it was going to, once again, bite them in their rear ends with this team. It looked that way for much of the game too.
For starters and if the injury woes couldn’t get any deeper, the guy starting in place of Bam in Dewayne Dedmon, went down with a knee injury five minutes into the contest. He was done for the night.
The Miami Heat needed to beat the Pistons Thursday and especially after losing to them Sunday. It wasn’t easy, but they did what they needed to get the win.
Even more so, for the entirety of what seems like the first half of play and a bit of the second, the Miami Heat were the second-placed team on the court in terms of effort and how hard they were working.
The Pistons seemed like they wanted it more and that would be for the second time in three games, had it continued to go their way. Then the Miami Heat got big-time play from a slew of characters on their cast.
Udonis Haslem stepped up to have some big minutes for his team that needed his size and physicality without their typical bigs going. Kyle Lowry pressed the issue and got the Miami Heat huge points when they needed them the most.
Tyler Herro and Max Strus did what they do. They produced in the biggest moments and when it was most needed by their team as well.
The Tyler Herro shot from above was borderline-maniacal. But it’s totally a Tyler-type look.
Strus nailed the shot that unknotted the game for the Heat, putting them up three with under a minute to go. It was a total group effort and they needed it too.
Their resilience keeps being tested— and they just keep acing the test.