The Miami Heat were able to get a tough win in their Monday Night contest against a feisty Toronto Raptors squad. They would play a premier contest on what has become a premiere date around the NBA, Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Though they would be without their starting point guard, with Kyle Lowry out for personal reasons, the Miami Heat still had a contest to go out and win against his former team. As it always is with these two teams, it was a dogfight from the very beginning to the end.
The Miami Heat came out and tried to get Bam Adebayo immediately going in his return, attempting to help him reacclimate early. He seemed a bit rusty and out of sorts, though and of course, he found ways to contribute as he normally does.
While the offense and the timing in the ball-handling, specifically on the catches in transactions between him and his teammates, was off, he was his normal active and defensively present self.
The Miami Heat had a tough contest against the Raptors Monday and though without Kyle Lowry going, they would get Bam Adebayo back in the mix.
Outside of the return of their star big man, the Miami Heat kept rolling along, specifically taking advantage of the very thing that has gotten them through the past couple of weeks with Bam’s injury and the NBA’s health and safety protocols.
That would be the depth of this iteration of the Miami Heat.
Caleb Martin stepped up to have big plays on Monday night and so did Gabe Vincent. Though Duncan Robinson didn’t have an explosion of any sort, he did look far more comfortable having his big man and cohort in Bam Adebayo back out there to hand him the ball for distance shots.
Tyler Herro continued to be Tyler Herro, while Jimmy Butler even messed around and got a triple-double.
Again, it all helped the Miami Heat get a tough victory in a close and scrappy game that came down to the very end, 104-99. Continuing along the theme of everyone doing their part, P.J. Tucker had a dagger three-pointer that would help seal the contest, before a pair of Bam free throws to close it for good.
There are two playoff nuggets of mention in closing here.
One, this win puts the Miami heat in sole possession of the second place in the Eastern Conference behind Chicago, owning the tie-breaker over Brooklyn. Also, if they happen to see these Raptors in the playoffs, it’ll be a tough and long series but on Monday, the Miami Heat were the victors.