Subscribe
Follow Us
As the Miami Heat takes on the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night, it starts the portion of the schedule that includes most games played in the comfort of their own home. With the Heat falling to the Hawks on Monday, it was a microcosm of the poor play the team has gone through losing six of their last seven including late-game collapses and shooting struggles.
Now that Miami is four games under .500, the present time is a prime opportunity to turn the season year and finish strong as besides being home nine of the next 10 games, the Heat is also home 18 of the final 26 contests of the regular season. Head coach Erik Spoelstra said after the frustrating loss to Atlanta that the team has to be “stubborn” to bounce back from the recent disappointment according to The Miami Herald.
“Our group is very resilient,” Spoelstra said. “Look, what you need right now, you need an incredible amount of stubbornness. You got to be stubborn. You absolutely got to be stubborn and persistent in what we’re trying to do. We’re not getting the result we want. But there are things that are trending in a better direction.”
Heat's Tyler Herro on the importance of capitalizing at home
The team hasn't had the best news as of late as, besides the struggles on the road, the Heat also have lost Nikola Jovic due to a broken hand for at least four weeks, putting his season in question. However, they have a chance to bring back joy by capitalizing these games at home as Tyler Herro and Jaime Jaquez Jr. put it.
“Coming into the season, we wanted to be one of the better teams at home, protect homecourt,” Herro said. “We haven’t been great at home, but I still think it’s a great opportunity for us to be at home. We haven’t been at home for a couple of weeks. So get home and win some games and try to climb in the standings.”
“It’s a huge opportunity for us to make a push and make a change in these standings,” Jaquez Jr said. “Obviously we don’t have the best record at home, but we can change that.”
As the Heat's young star in Jaquez mentioned, the record hasn't been the best in the Kaseya Center as they are 12-11 and even going back to last season, the total record including the playoffs is 35-32.
“We’re just at the point of the season where you’ve got to seize the moment, especially where we are, where we want to be,” Heat forward Duncan Robinson said. “These games are of the utmost priority.”
Article Continues Below
Heat trying to solidify playoff position, likely for play-in tournament
The home-heavy schedule will be a chance to fix the flaws the Heat have which have included blowing double-digit leads going into the fourth quarter among other aspects. Spoelstra's message to the team is pretty simple, it's to “quiet all the noise” and focus on the aspects that have made the team successful in the first place.
“You got to quiet all the noise and just not listen to anything, not read anything,” Spoelstra said. “That’s just the deal right now. We’re closer than what it feels like. We’re putting this thing together quickly and sometimes it doesn’t happen just like that.
“But are you building the right habits and building the right trends through the adversity? The head coach feels that we are and so you got to be stubborn,” Spoelstra continued. “You got to put your head down and collectively be stubborn-minded about this until we start generating some wins.”
Miami will try to fight tooth and nail to escape the play-in tournament, but it seems unlikely as per Basketball Reference, the team has a 7.8 percent chance to be the sixth seed and escape the tourney.
“Obviously, we’re not where we want to be,” Herro said. “We got to continue to fight. We go home for a couple games, we got to win those and just continue to build off that.”
At any rate, the Heat are 26-3o which puts them ninth in the Eastern Conference before facing the Hawks on Wednesday.
