Against a top-three team in the NBA, the Miami Heat came out and gave it all they had. However, they couldn’t come up with a win.
And in a theme this season for this team, continuing to miss key pieces and this time including Tyler Herro, it was up to the other two top players for the Miami Heat to give the Denver Nuggets all they could muster in hopes of victory.
Going up by double digits early in the game, the Miami Heat would allow one of the league’s hottest-scoring teams to come back and take the lead. Fast-forwarding to the most important part of the game, the Miami Heat would proceed to make it a contest in the final moments.
With the chance to close the gap to just two points at the free throw line off of three Max Strus free throws and of which he had made the first two, the Miami Heat decided to do something rather interesting and usually reserved for situations where there isn’t a logical or typical means in sight.
The Miami Heat played the Nuggets well all game. Coming down to a few points in the final moments of play, the Heat went “intentional miss”, weirdly enough.
That would be to miss it on purpose on Strus’s last attempt.
Instead of attempting to make the shot, playing the foul game, and hoping to go fullcourt to make a three or two, depending on if the Nuggets could make their free throws, that was the play. And mind you, in several of the immediately previous nuggets possessions, they had seen missed free throws in some of them.
But deciding to miss the free throw allowed a Nuggets rebound and effectively, them to end the game is the biggest and most questionable call of the night. The Miami Heat played the Nuggets tight, they were able to score well, and had a chance to win but that last call literally leaves you scratching your head.
The Miami Heat have played a ton of close or clutch games on the year thus far and they have come through in quite a bit more than they haven’t. So with that, you trust that they’ll get better from this point but this one still doesn’t feel any better because of it.