The Miami Heat collected a quality win Tuesday night as they beat their Eastern Conference rivals in the New York Knicks, 109-99, inside the Kaseya Center. It was always going to be a tough game as the Knicks have been very successful this season led by star Jalen Brunson as big-man Bam Adebayo and head coach Erik Spoelstra talked about how they defended the All-Star.
Miami controlled the game for most of the duration, but maybe more importantly, maintained the explosiveness of Brunson who has been one of the more exciting players the last few seasons. He was only held to just six points in the first half as he ended up with 20 points and 10 assists.
Before the game, Spoelstra said to the media that when you are facing a team like the Knicks and especially a player like Brunson, a team has to be “extremely disciplined.” He would even say with the way he's been playing as of recent, “you're not taking things away from him.”
“He is at that level right now, you have to be really good at what you do. You have to have a bunch of habits built on a lot of weeks and months and you just try to be extremely disciplined to your system,” Spoelstra said. “You're not taking things away from him at this point, at the level he's playing right now. And that's why those habits that we talked about all the time are, we have to beat the Knicks. You have to make it tough on him, but ultimately we want to make it tough on their team and when we're at that level defensively, we're capable of that.”
Bam Adebayo, Spoelstra details how the Heat contained Brunson, Knicks
The Heat 100 percent did exactly what Spoelstra said in his pre-game press conference and made Brunson's night a wreck as they dirtied up the game and made it physical. As Adebayo said to the media after the outing, besides forcing the Knicks star out of rhythm, they threw different coverages and defenders at him, even the star big-man himself at one point was guarding him.
“In the gaps early, not letting him get into rhythm, forcing him to take different shots, just giving him different coverages,” Adebayo said. “We got different guys covering him, Caleb [Martin], Jimmy [Butler], H [Haywood Highsmith] at times, Terry [Rozier] at times, sometimes I even switched on him, just keeping the menu different.”
While he was contained for the most part as shot five of 18 from the field, there was other players such as Donte DiVincenzo and Miles McBride that took the weight as they scored 31 and 24 points respectively. It was just how Spoelstra predicted as he said to the media that when you “corral” Brunson, it leaves room for their other shooters to thrive.
“It is difficult, because you corral them and then now they have three point shooters, you know, every time probably everybody's saying how did he get open? That's how he got open,” Spoelstra said. “Great players force you to bring a second defender and sometimes a third defender and then you have to scramble and make things up from there, but he's that good right now. You know, his footwork, and his cleverness, his aggressiveness and playing against your aggressiveness, the entire package. It just makes it extremely challenging. You just have to be absolutely rock solid and display that sometimes he's going to make shots even when he did that.”
Spoelstra talks introducing Heat-Knicks rivalry to newcomers, like Rozier
The Knicks would make a run late in the game where as they were down 16 points at one point, then they dwindled down the deficit slowly to where they had a one-point lead in the fourth quarter. But it was the heroics of Terry Rozier that saved Miami from losing another lead as he scored 34 points on 10 of 15 shooting, but importantly shot eight of 11 from deep.
There's no doubt that the Heat and Knicks have had endless back and forth type of games as their rivalry has spanned multiple decades at this point. With the way the game ended, Spoelstra wasn't surprised the game script was the way it turned out to be as he called it an “introduction” to the rivalry to their new players, especially Rozier.
“More than anything, this was an introduction to our newsletters, especially Terry, that this is an introduction to Heat-Knicks,” Spoelstra said. “Now, this is what these games are. It's going to be back and forth all game long. Teams will get a double digit lead, the other team will come back like that's what happens.”
How usually a game between Miami and New York goes, per Spoelstra
The crowd inside the Kaseya Center was electric as despite it being an integral regular season game, it had a playoff atmosphere of both Heat and Knicks fans. Spoelstra mentioned that it was “awesome to be a part of these type of games” where this was just scratching the surface of what's to come from the Heat.
“But you have two teams that are very committed to doing tough things, particularly on the defensive end and it's tough to generate wide open looks,” Spoelstra said. “Anytime there is an open look, you see both benches just going crazy, overreacting to any kind of miscue, but somebody does have to score you know, this is not just a cage match, but it's really competitive and it was good to see us respond to the competition and find a way to win it at the end. It's awesome to be a part of these types of games that have this kind of spirit. You know, you have to play well. You have to you have to do things well connected together to be able to earn wins and we were able to do that tonight.”
There is no understating how crucial of a win this was for the Heat as they are trying to get out of contention for the play-in tournament and obtain a top six seed. Miami is currently 42-33 on the season with seven games left which puts them seventh in the Eastern Conference, one game back of the sixth seed Indiana Pacers, as their next game is Thursday against the Philadelphia 76ers.
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