It was just one game, but it wasn’t an encouraging one for the Miami Heat on Wednesday, getting smacked on their home floor 116-97 by the Orlando Magic. Check out Dan’s full recap of the game here–spoiler: It wasn’t pretty.
Bam Adebayo ultimately called the performance “embarrassing” after the game. He’s not wrong. After all, Jimmy Butler and Adebayo combined to score just 12 points on 2-of-13 shooting while finishing 5th and 6th on the team in usage, respectively.
That can’t happen if the Heat want to win 45-plus games. Though there is another glaring trend that this team must fix sooner rather than later.
Heat continues struggling beating good teams. Will that change?
Last year, the Miami Heat were 5-20 against teams who were top-10 in point differential, according to Cleaning The Glass. That marks the sixth-worst record in the NBA–being above only Charlotte, Toronto, Portland, Washington and Detroit, all of whom were noticeably tanking. Most of them still are and will be playing “Capture the Flagg” throughout 2024-25.
In those games a year ago, the Heat were No. 22 in offense, No. 18 in defense and No. 21 in NET Rating. Accounting for their mediocre mediocre efficiency, their expected win total in those games was 6.6, which be 21.6 extrapolated over an 82-game season, the 21st-best in the league. No other playoff team ranked that low.
That glaring trend ultimately appeared to have reared its ugly head again Wednesday.
Of course, it was just one game–the opening game, rather–and who knows whether or not the Magic will be a team that finishes in the top 10 in point differential. The Heat could very well finish 14-15 (9th) against those teams, as it did in 2022-23, or 10-13 (10th), as it did in 2021-22.
It’s hard to consistently beat good teams. Conventional wisdom suggests Orlando will be a formidable foe again this season. It looked the part Wednesday; Orlando ranked No. 14 in CTG’s NET Rating statistic, which weeds out garbage time numbers, last year. It’s projected to be better with the addition of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and the continued growth of Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Jalen Suggs and Wendell Carter Jr. But it’s a long season. Anything can happen.
Regardless, the Heat’s regular season struggles against a few of the league’s best continue to persist. Perhaps this was the wake-up call it needed. Different seasons provide different contexts, which gift different results.
Miami’s schedule won’t get much easier after its next two games against Charlotte and Detroit. If we’re basing it off last year–which may be unfair to do, but appropriate enough given we’re just one game into the season–seven of their next 10 after Detroit will be against teams that ranked in the top-10 in point differential last year; five of those games will be on the road.
That doesn’t include home contests against Dallas and Milwaukee after the fact, who were No. 12 and 11 in that category, respectively.
The point is: The Heat must play up to their competition if they don’t want their season to spiral away quickly. We’re one game in, but we’re going to find out who they are really quickly–assuming we haven’t already.
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Time for Heat to demonstrate who they are. I’ll give them until end of year. They will either be contenders, average or very mediocre. If either average or mediocre, I for one think it will be time to blow it all up and start over with a youthfully re-build around Bam.