As the trade talks intensified between the Miami Heat and Jimmy Butler, the team itself had a huge bounce-back win against the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday, 114-98. The Heat were looking forward to the current road trip lasting six games, but it started with a heartbreaker, losing to the Sacramento Kings in double overtime after losing a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter as head coach Erik Spoelstra continues to speak about a “breakthrough.”
The word “breakthrough” seems to be one that the players and coaching staff are instilling into themselves as they look to overcome not just their deficiencies on the court without Butler, but also in suppressing the outside noise. Spoelstra even spoke before the game about the “unfortunate pain” that teams have to go through in order to reach the desired destination according to Anthony Chiang of The Miami Herald.
“This is a very ambitious group,” Spoelstra said. “Sometimes, unfortunately, you have to go through some pain in this league to learn how to win games. We’ve had some moving parts, and I’m not saying that as an excuse. We’re figuring it out. … These are great learning points for our group. We’ll get a breakthrough.”
Erik Spoelstra on Heat's competitiveness
The win over Golden State is a giant step in the right direction in order for a “breakthrough” to happen as even besides the aforementioned loss to Sacramento, they are also trying to erase from their minds the Heat's 36-point loss to the Utah Jazz. Spoelstra was very impressed with the “competitive character” of his team having the eagerness in the second game of a back-to-back to come out and get a much-needed win.
“You have to expect it to be really tough whenever you’re on the road and this league is tough,” Spoelstra said. “But these are opportunities, when you have a real tough game last night and a quick turnaround, you can rally around each other or you can get overwhelmed and feel sorry for yourselves. We have a group that has great competitive character.”
A main reason for the victory was how Miami played defense against Golden State, using zone frequently to get them out of sorts which resulted in the opponents shooting 40.8 percent from the field and 28 percent from three-point range. While star Stephen Curry had 31 points and an impressive night, the rest of the team was maintained as Spoelstra saw some “teaching points” in the loss to the Kings taken into Tuesday.
“Last night, as painful as that was, there were a lot of teaching points that in tonight’s game, we were better in those areas,” Spoelstra said. “Offensive organization, controlling the lead at different key times and the efforts were there two nights in a row defensively against a team that can score and obviously get you in a bunch of compromising ways with Curry and all the actions they run.”
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Heat on overcoming King's double-overtime loss
The performance would get some praise from the Heat's captain Bam Adebayo who had a solid game finishing with 19 points to go along with nine rebounds, five assists, and two steals. He would talk about how they limited the offensive production of the Warriors, holding them to under 100 points which brings Miami's record to 9-0 when doing such.
“We were disruptive,” Adebayo said. “We got stops, we rebounded the basketball today. And we got out and made plays.”
It was also another productive night for second-year Heat player Jaime Jaquez Jr. who also got his second straight start, seemingly in place for Butler as the two do share some similar traits in their offensive game. After recording his first triple-double the night before, he finished with 18 points and five rebounds as he spoke about what the focus was heading into Tuesday's game.
“I wanted to get off to a good start,” Jaquez said. “Last night, we obviously had a big double-overtime game, so I know this game we wanted to get off to a really good start and continue that and have great energy throughout the entirety of the game. So that was kind of my mentality going into it.”
Besides Adebayo and Jaquez, the team was led by Nikola Jovic who had a team-high 20 points off the bench and also showed some impressive play-making four assists and six rebounds. The Heat's All-Star hopeful Tyler Herro had an off-game with nine points as he was playing with a knee contusion.
Miami is now 18-17 as they next face the Jazz on Thursday.
