With the Miami Heat being one of the leading scoring teams in the league, the Dallas Mavericks brought a halt to their high-powered offense, getting the best of them on Wednesday night, 118-108. Despite the Heat being without star Norman Powell, it was still a missed opportunity for the team, a phrase that would be echoed around the locker room after the loss.
Miami and Dallas met once before Wednesday's loss, resulting in a 106-102 win, and while that ended positively, the two games share having the team's lowest scoring effort by the fast-paced team. Speaking of which, the defeat also marked the Heat's slowest pace of the season, recording 100 possessions per 48 minutes.
What led to an off-shooting night for Miami was the Mavericks' clogging any passing lanes, which “jammed up” the spacing for the team to utilize their strengths on offense, as head coach Erik Spoelstra said. In total, his team shot 40 percent from the field and 30 percent from three-point range.
“It’s not just us missing shots,” Spoelstra said, according to The Miami Herald. “First half, our spacing was a little bit jammed up. Against a good defense like that, particularly at the rim, they do a great job with their bigs of protecting at the rim.”
“If your spacing is not right, you’re going to be bumping into each other,” Spoelstra continued. “It took us a while to get our spacing appropriate because we had good drives in the first half, but we were running right into each other. Then that started to get cleaned up a little bit, and then we missed some open looks. But Dallas is a very good defensive team, so you do have to credit them.”
Tyler Herro on what the Heat have to do when shots aren't falling
As the Heat were coming off destroying the Los Angeles Clippers last Monday, the team came back to reality in Dallas, as the opponents no doubt got a huge boost not just from rookie Cooper Flagg, but star Anthony Davis. The veteran big man recorded 17 points and 17 rebounds, while Flagg scored 22 points, but it was their collective effort defensively that got Miami off-kilter, especially Tyler Herro, who despite scoring 20 points in the first half, was held scoreless in the second half.
“We’ve got to get in transition a little bit more, get the ball out, play faster,” Herro said. “Dallas did a good job of keeping us off the three-point line, making things tough. We were getting the looks we wanted…We can still win games when shots aren’t falling. It’s not all offense. We’ve got to figure out ways to win when things aren’t going our way.”
As Herro mentioned, Miami has won games when they were playing “out of the mud” as some on the team say, which is what made this loss a missed opportunity.
“I felt like it was an opportunity that slipped for us to be able to have that gratification of winning a game where we weren’t making shots,” Spoelstra said. “But through three quarters, there was more discouragement from our missed shots that was affecting our concentration level and resolve defensively.”
At any rate, Miami drops to 14-8, with the next opportunity to bounce back coming Friday night against the Orlando Magic.
