As the Miami Heat face the Brooklyn Nets tonight in the midst of a six-game winning streak, the team will be adding a key piece in the rotation. Forward Caleb Martin will be available for the Heat in the matchup against the Nets and head coach Erik Spoelstra opened up about how important he is to Miami.
During Spoelstra's pre-game media availability, he gave insight into how Martin was feeling on the bench as he had to watch instead of be with his teammates on the floor. Tonight will be Martin's first game since the season opener against the Detroit Pistons as he dealt with a left knee injury.
“I know it was frustrating for him and, you know, he kept on wanting to get back out there sooner,” Spoelstra said. “But it's not as if we had to put him on the shelf and just sit him down, he was able to still do activities and then still be able to do things that we can see progress. He's excited to be available. And then hopefully, we can just keep him going.”
During this winning streak that the Heat are on, a vital reason was the depth of the team showing out besides the top players like Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Especially with the absence of Tyler Herro, it was crucial that the supporting cast needed to step up.
Now adding Martin, it's another piece for Spoelstra to work with. He said that he amplifies what's going right for Miami at the moment ahead of the game vs. the Nets.
“I think everybody's excited about it. Because he brings an element of what we're doing and it's on steroids. You know, he's fast, multi positional,” Spoelstra said. “He has a quick Twitch, and that's on both sides of the floor. He just fills in a bunch of different gaps that you can't really teach or scheme against. It just fits exactly what what we've been doing of late.”
Spoelstra did reveal that he told the trainers not to put Martin on a minutes restriction, but emphasized that they're going to be “intelligent” about how they treat him.
Spoelstra speaks on the Nets and upcoming five-game road trip
While the Heat lost all four games in their first four-game road trip, it was the exact opposite in the next opportunity. Even though Miami is playing their best basketball now, a five-game road test looms after the Nets. Spoelstra said to ClutchPoints that the team played great on the last road trip, but that's in the past.
“It was a great road trip. We don't want to take anything away from from that. Everybody poured into that tough schedule and some of the adversity that we had, but that's done, that's over with, that doesn't guarantee anything moving forward. Other than the fact that we're building some better habits, but we have to handle our business here at home,” Spoelstra said. “Brooklyn already beat us earlier in the season and we were up 16 In that game and I felt like we were in control. They had some injuries but they're playing great right now, so we expect this to be a tough game.”
When asked about why Brooklyn has been a challenge to Miami in the past, Spoelstra said that he's “not going to concede that” information. However, he did say that the Nets are a good team.
“I'm not going to concede that. I mean this is just competition, we got to figure it out. They're good team. you have to respect that,” Spoelstra said. “And they play fast. they shoot a lot of threes, they're very good driving team. Now we do some things that we think we do very well. Now just figure out you know who can be the better team tonight.”
The Heat will try to make it seven in a row against the Nets tonight and hope they don't recreate the loss to Brooklyn from Nov. 1 where they lost a 16-point lead. The game starts at 7:30 p.m. (EST) and will take place in the Kaseya Center.
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