The Los Angeles Clippers found just enough juice in the second half to scrape past the Miami Heat 103-95 in the Kaseya Center Sunday evening.
The Clippers led 69-67 entering the final period. The Heat took the lead 46 seconds into the period courtesy of a Jaime Jaquez Jr. wing triple. The two teams jostled over the following two possessions, but a 15-4 Clippers outburst from the 9:11 to the 5:19 mark–a 3:52 span–made the ultimate difference. The sequence was spearheaded by James Harden–who knocked down two stepback jumpers, including one that was a four-point play (he missed the free-throw)–Norman Powell, Paul George and Mason Plumlee.
Miami eventually trimmed the lead to four points–99-95–with 13 seconds left, but the effort was too little, too late.
Sunday’s loss snaps its two-game win streak, while extending the Clippers’ win streak to three games. Los Angeles has now won eight of their last nine and 11 of their last 13. The Heat, on the other hand, have won just two of their last 10.
As a result of the Pacers and Magic wins on Sunday, the Heat dipped to No. 8 in the Eastern Conference standings.
The Heat shot 41.8 percent from the floor, but shot just 8-of-30 from 3-point range. Jimmy Butler led the Heat with 21 points on 8-of-19 shooting with four rebounds, three assists and two steals. Terry Rozier was arguably Miami’s best player Sunday, tallying 17 points, seven rebounds, five assists and two steals on 7-of-17 shooting. Bam Adebayo and Josh Richardson posted 14 points apiece, while Adebayo hauled in 13 rebounds, three assists and three steals.
Kawhi Leonard led the CLippers with 25 points and 11 rebounds on 8-of-16 shooting, snapping his 30-plus point streak (three games). He also had a pair of blocks and steals. James Harden tallied a near triple-double, tallying 21 points, 11 assists and eight rebounds on 7-of-13 shooting and 5-of-9 from 3-point range. Paul George posted 15 rebounds, seven rebounds and four assists. Norman Powell was the team’s only other double-figure scorer with 16 points on 6-of-12 shooting in 28 minutes off the bench.
Tyler Herro was a very late scratch from Sunday’s game because it was deemed he had a headache. Duncan Robinson was the only Heat regular rotation player ruled out because of a concussion. Without two of their most productive offensive players, Butler and Adebayo did not carry the requisite intent needed–especially down the stretch–against one of the league’s deepest rosters in the Clippers.
The Heat look to get back on the right track Tuesday against the Orlando Magic, who they now trail by one game in the East standings. What were your takeaways from the game? Let us know in the comments!
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does bam want to be great.man theres more in that athletic frame to be had.he needs to want to be great want to be the man.dont see that in him good player now with work and determination think could be great.how bad does he want it got paid lots $$.need more from him
He needs a 3 point shot AND to be playing Power Forward next to a big two-way center! Only then.
hes got freak athleticism great pf body why dont the heat pair him with a big is a spo scratcher.big good centers really expose him.i think hes cool getting his 20 10 and big bank account
Ei HHH (and Pat) I heard Giannis is not happy with doc and their team. Well at least now. Just saying 😉
I honestly can’t believe all these comments about how the Heat aren’t good enough, and how they would lose to the Celtics or Bucks or Knicks. They lose to those teams in the regular season every year, and they beat them in the playoffs every year. this year is no different
Good point. I am definitely not on that bandwagon. While it’s obvious that some teams are doing considerably better, or are clearly better on paper, you basically throw that stuff out when you get into the playoffs. So many variables – injuries, entering on a major hot streak, or cold streak, matchups, etc. I remain optimistic until the final game. I think the team could use another trade. If they don’t, I’ll hope that all the pieces meld together for another run. Que sera sera.
All about the standing bro. Ws and Ls. Its just like last season. At least a lot of similarities and so goes the posts, comments also. Same folks, same opinions and I do respect those. This Heat version is an aberration meaning they go against the flow. Good to average players still they contend year in year out. Why is that? Some may laugh at it (even Heat fans) but to me its the Culture baby! Why do we think A-list players always has south beach on their preference? Miami is the place to be! 😁😆😂
I also think a lot of it is about the fact that the Heat spend the entire regular season building something. That means they go through ups and downs. They try different things, some of them work, some of them don’t. They go long stretches with their best players in or out of the lineup.
Meanwhile teams like the Celtics and Bucks and Sixers are acting like it’s the playoffs starting game 1. They get out to the front of the standings to start the season, and then spend the rest of the season trying to stay in front. That means they never have to deal with adversity, that means they are never willing to lose games in the short run to be better in the long run. And that means by the time we reach the playoffs, their guys are exhausted, and then they get injured, and the backups have no experience playing important roles. So they use that as an excuse. Meanwhile, the Heat deal with the same amount of injuries and adversity, and are much better equipped to deal with it.
The Heat deal with adversity every season. And it’s a feature, not a bug.
Nice! Amen brotha! Go Heat!
Those teams all re-tooled so they aren’t the same teams as before. Boston especially, who we beat in 7 games, are much improved with Porzingis and Holiday. Cleveland (now in second place) is pretty scary too. Heat…not so much.
Heat are better with JJJ/JRich/Jovic/Bryrant than they were Gabe/Max/Zeller. Rozier is an obvious upgrade over Lowry. Butler is older, but Bam, Herro, Duncan, and Caleb all look better. Hell, even Love looks better suited for his role.
Bucks added Dame but lost Holiday, and the rest of their team looks Shakey. Celtics added Holiday & Porzingis, but lost Smart and Time Lord and Brogden. Cavs and Knicks and Magic and Pacers are all good but have very little playoff experience. The Sixers, psh, don’t make me laugh. I hear they’re planning to tank this season as part of their 10-year process to get out of the second round.
Are the Heat going to win the East again this season? I honestly don’t know. But am I worried about playing against any of these teams in the playoffs? Hell no
Only Celts imo is legit contender coz you know, their regular season showing. So im rooting for a #7 spot and above and then hope to see them in ecf. Cross fingers. Lol I’m already counting chickens and I might eat the eggs raw
We shall see. I would rather you be right than me. Everyone has a right to an opinion and I respect yours. The nice thing is that in sports, there is clarity, and the truth will come out for us all.
Last year vs this year’s records 2022-23 vs 2023-2024:
Boston – 2-2, 0-2 so far.
Milwaukee – 2-2, 0-2 so far
Knicks 1-3, 0-2 so far
5-7 vs 0-6
Also note:
Clippers – 2-0, 0-2
Suns – 2-0, 0-2
Utah 2-0, 0-1
6-0 vs 0-5
I mean, its not so bad. at least we still got our team intact. Jimmy, Bam, Herro..our core guys are relatively healthy. Looking around the league, embiid is out, and sixers are in a freefall. We can still buckle up, get that 6th seed, knock off the knicks, and get back to the finals
I love the idea but easier said than done. Well, these Heat bunch doesn’t like easy anyway lol. Go Heat!
Pat Riley look before you leap, as more trade scenarios are suggested to you. I guess I will say 1-5, but the statistics same.
“Since trading Kyle Lowry, Miami heat are 0-4 and are giving up 123pts a game
Not only heat have terrible offense they now have a terrible defense with adding in terry roziar
They were giving 109pts a game with Kyle Lowry
123pts now with roziar huge difference.
Grass ain’t always greener man especially with a player like Lowry who’s impact goes beyond what’s shown in box scores.”
https://www.espn.com/nba/standings
The above information is all based on facts which are indisputable. But one may use data in different ways. For example, the quoted paragraph above is clearly from the first 4 games after Rozier arrived.
So, let’s look at another set of indisputable facts. In the last 3 games, the Heat are 2-1, scoring an average of 107 points per game, while giving up 104 points per game.
”They were giving 109pts a game with Kyle Lowry.”
”123pts now with rozier huge difference.”
104 ppg over the last 3 seems to be a nice little improvement and a massive improvement over the 123 ppg over the first 4 games.
Absolutely nobody will convince me that, at this stage of their respective careers, Lowry is a better player than Rozier.
There is a reason teams are not lining up with offers to obtain Lowry. He is no longer a starting quality point guard. He will be part of a package as an expiring contract or to balance salaries. Or he will be bought out. Right now, he is an experienced veteran who can still give you some decent minutes and be a great mentor for younger players. He had some nice moments contributing to the team’s success, but his best years were already behind him when he received that $85 million contract.
If you add your 3 games to the 4, the math is still worse. The purpose of my putting up those number is because we only see friendly stats put forward by pro trade proponents. So is good to put the good and the bad out there. The Heat have all those Stats by the way but we the fans see only what someone else puts out.
I agree and numbers don’t lie. But you referenced only the first 4 Rozier games, so I pointed out looking at the last 3 presented a totally different result. The reality as far as I am concerned, is that either comparison is far too small a sample size to draw a valid conclusion. We know what Lowry did for 3 1/2 years. It would only be fair to see what Rozier does at least between now and the end of the season.
Thanks for posting a good counter argument. It will be interesting to see what everyone says when the season has reached its conclusion. The one thing that would be hard to accept rationally is that the trade for Rozier was the reason we did not go far this year, and that if we kept Lowry we would have made it to the finals. And that may very well what may be said on these threads come this summer. Reality can be elusive as stats can be distorted especially by people who are adverse to admitting what they thought wasn’t true.
Your rationalization coming so early before the end of the regular season is quite telling; that you are not confident that Rozier will take the Heat to the so called promised land. No excuses, please.
Herro for
Martin for Toppin
Rozier, Sexton, Butler, Toppin, Bam
Richardson, Robinson, Jaquez, Olynyk, Love,
That would be a terribly short backcourt, that would be a bad decision. I would rather do Martin and a 2nd for either Kelly o, or toppin. Nothing against sexton, but we can’t have 2 guards under 6’3. The only way I can see that working is if you put sexton as the 6th man. The starting lineup could be terry,duncan,jimmy,toppin ,bam or Terry, jrich,jimmy,kelly o, bam.
Robinson starting Sexton with second unit works for me.
need some other guys with jim and bam for sure 3-15 not good enough
So here’s what I would say about trading ‘Herro for Sexton’ or ‘Martin for Toppin’.
Best case scenario, those are lateral moves. You’re trading a role player for a role player. We can argue about whether Toppin is better than Martin or whatever, but that’s ultimately irrelevant. Unless we’re talking about cashing in all the chips for an all-star game changer, we’re talking about trading a role player for a role player.
Pat Riley makes certain kinds of trades. He’ll got all-in for an all-star, but everyone in the current NBA is trying to make that kind of trade, so those are out. He’ll trade a draft pick and a bad contract for a rotation player, but he just did that for Terry Rozier. Heat are running out of draft picks, and regardless of how you feel about Duncan or Caleb or Herro, I don’t think Riley considers those bad contracts (and neither do I).
So that leaves one kind “Riley type move” left before the end of the season.
If the Heat have one move left, it’s to add a veteran that everyone think is washed up to play a bench role. Bjogdonavic or Olynyk are dream candidates, but the Heat aren’t going to pay they freight for the popular trade rumors. That’s why they traded for Rozier instead of Dejuante Murray. So they’ll want a low cost alternative.
So that’s my prediction. The Heat won’t trade any more rotation pieces. And if they add one more player, it will be a veteran forward that can shoot 3’s and defend.
We played as good as we could of against the best team in the NBA (record wise). The defense was good as evident from the 17 turnovers that we forced, along with pg being held to a crappy game. But the difference in the game was all the wide open, easy shots we missed. Also the refs and harden flopping didn’t make it easier. If we could hit 3 more 3’s we could of won. That’s why having herro or Duncan is important. We could play the best defense in the world, but it simply won’t matter, if we don’t make enough shots. A lot of you want herro on the bench and rightfully so. But idk if his ego will allow that, if he was really team first, he would do it, but idk if he would ever wanna go back to the bench tbh. All ik is that we need to make another trade, bam needs a front court partner badly. Locksmith is great defensively, but he isn’t tall enough, and doesn’t rebound good enough. Bam hasn’t been playing good lately offensively, I think it’s combination of him being the tired banging with the trees by himself, shooting slump, and still trying to acclimate to being the 3rd or 4th option. Pat Riley gotta make a trade soon because as currently constructed..this team probably won’t make it far in the playoffs.
“You can’t fix it if you are in denial that it’s broken.”– SunMan (02/05/24)
The Miami Heat have a losing record against the kind of teams they’ll face in the playoffs — if they make it that far.
Sunday’s loss to the LA Clippers dropped the Heat to 8-16 against teams currently with a winning record (they are 18-8 against teams currently below .500). The Heat are also 2-12 against teams with a top-10 point differential, according to Cleaning the Glass.
The Heat won just two games against teams with winning records in January (the Kings and Lakers), and their best wins of the season came against the Cavaliers without Donovan Mitchell (Dec. 8) and the 76ers without Joel Embiid (Dec. 25).
https://allucanheat.com/posts/troubling-stat-forecasts-concern-for-miami-heat-playoff-push?utm_campaign=FanSided+Daily&utm_source=FanSided+Daily&utm_medium=email&sc=e0273490fd355e2c28bdb25751d41af65a4dd80936ff00a80be9866c97887955
.
Miami could use Bogdanovic (from Detroit).
wrong ic need vucev
Naw we need a pf/c.
pf/c? I would’ve qualified a long time ago when I was a pfc serving my Uncle Sam.
Like a power forward or center or a tweener and possibly.
We gave them one helluva game. We might have won this game if we had not missed so many easy shots (not just the open 3’s), particularly Adebayo, who had been making making all of those short shots when he won the East Player of the month awards earlier this season. I loved watching our defense making them earn every shot. I hope that they continue using this opening lineup. Unfortunately the Clippers are such a great shooting team (4 future Hall of Famers) we just could not stop them in spite of our great defensive pressure. As much as Herro has improved on defense he is still not even close to being as as good as Martin or Richardson. We need to show the other teams starters that they are in for a fight when when they play the Heat (Heat culture). We need to replace Herro as a starter and move him to the second team where he will be against the other teams lesser players where he will once again standout. Go Heat!
Its only one game, but defense was great, which might be connected with Herros absence.
But we need shooting, you cant win scoring 20 in the qt.
Thats probably the reason Herro will start.
We have a capable scorer in Terry. Perhaps he could break out if Tyler wasn’t sharing the backcourt with him.
To me Ty and Rozier are redundant. Pretty much the same player. Terry might be a bit better defensively.
Capable scorer, bad bad shooter from distance, at least for now. I wouldn’t mind if Swider got some minutes in this one.
Last night was a good effort against one of the four best teams in the league, nothing to feel too bad about. But I am hoping for a trade. Maybe Dunc’s concussion made him untradable at this time and Ty became our best option. Or, maybe he had bad headaches and couldn’t play, which happens.
Hard to know as the Heat are so tightlipped before making any moves. But, how can anyone not see that this team is a good team, not a great one (citing SMFDB). This team needs more. Anyone, and the definitely Pat, can see Jimmy can’t carry us as much as last year.
If we want to have a chance this year a trade is imperative. Anyone who doesn’t see the truth will after the next stretch of games. It really is give up for this year or make a move, a big move, and now. And, not some PJ Tucker old guy off the buyout bargain heap either.
Or, just play out the string. Philly being out does not make our path easier as add Cleveland and New York as teams that are playing better than us, as well as the Celtics. Milwaukee will beat us too, even though they are having some issues currently.
It will be a shame if we don’t make the one more move, as Jimmy types are rare. This is his last hurrah being a player who can become Playoff Jimmy, or Him, not 1-3 years down the line. And this is not an indictment of this team, far from it. If we didn’t make the Rozier trade I would say we are too far away. But., now we are one player away. But, it has to be the right one.
Go Heat!
This game shows, how important is shooting for Heat.
Butler is mostly eliminated if there is not enough shooting around him.
He didn’t had a chance in the rim.
Bam is terrible right now. He need rest and a week of practicing shooting. Not good for the team the he will spend that time at all star game.
On the bright side, defence was great. Rosier shows what he is capable of, and JRich become a reliable presence for this team. Even JJJ shows some life.
It was a spirited fight. Just shows how valuable 3 point shooting is in today’s game. How can you catch up with 2s when your opponent answers back with a 3. Not for lack of trying our 3s just did not faĺl.
Heat 2-8 in last 10 games. Now firmly in control of 8th place (3 games up on Chicago and 3.5 games up on Atlanta). Thankfully, Heat are a full 5 games up on 11th place Brooklyn.
Hard to imagine that a trade would help at this point. Maybe the all-star break will help players get back on track. If not, I can see some big changes coming this summer.
They’re 2-1 since the losing streak. They have 5 games left before the trade deadline, and 4 of them are against playoff teams in the East.
I’m going to write off the losing streak. It was a weird stetch of the season, and I think the Lowry trade effected these guys that spend every day with him and went to the Finals with him.
That said, they’re playing better over the last 3, and the next 5 are big games. Should be a fun couple weeks of basketball
7 of the next 9 games are against playoff teams (Boston, Milwaukee, Philly, New Orleans, Sacramento, Orlando and Denver). The way the team is currently playing, it will be very lucky to win 3. Even that would leave them sub-500 at 29-30, Miami has struggled all year against winning teams and lately even against losing teams. I’m getting vibes of 2021.
This team was playing better before Jaquez got hurt and before Butler and Herro returned from injury. Everybody knew their roles and played them very well. It’s almost as though everyone let their guards down when Jimmy and Herro returned. Now, the whole team has lost it’s mojo and is playing like dogshit.
Even Butler seems confused with his role. He should be aggressive at all times and shooting 20-25 shots per game, instead of 13.9. There are long stretches when he becomes a spectator. Miami can’t win without “Playoff Jimmy” working his ass off every game. I get the impression he is saving himself for the playoffs at the expense of the regular season. Unfortunately, the team is suffering as a consequence. This ain’t working Pat. Time to consider making some changes…if not before the trade deadline on Thursday then for sure this summer.
GO HEAT!!!
again, I think we have to look at the losing streak as an outlier. The injuries you mentioend (JJJ and Love getting hut, Jimmy Herro and Caleb coming back) all happened during the losing streak, so did the Lowry/Rozier trade.
I’m not saying everything is fine, but I am saying there is no need to worry or make a panic move. They played terrible during the losing streak, and then something clearly changed in the locker room before the Kings game. They’re playing better, with four big games before the all-star break. Let’s see what happens before we start worrying about the summer.
without Herro we cant even reach 3 digit scoring. I really hope if they do trade Herro, its for a scoring wing which this team really needs
Reposting…
That Tyler headache they say was a precursor to a trade! On going?! Just from unreliable sources. Lol. That’s a nervous laugh
Even this game report hints at that possibility.
yeah sounds like a trade in the brewing
i don’t have a good source for unreliable trade rumors. But it does seem like Rozier was brought in to replace Tyler in case it was necessary
Same thing that I thought. Redundant.
Mmmmmm, same sickening thought that I had.