A second-half surge from Karl-Anthony Towns and the New York Knicks propelled them to a 116-107 win over the Miami Heat inside Kaseya Center Wednesday night.
Towns led the Knicks with 44 points on 17-of-25 shooting and 4-of-5 from 3-point range. He also hauled-in a game-high 13 rebounds with two assists in 39 minutes. Jalen Brunson had 18 of his 22 points in the second half, converting on six of his 18 field goal attempts with nine assists.
New York outscored the Heat 64-49 in the second half, including 35-22 in the third quarter, where the Heat continues to have struggles; entering Wednesday, they have posted a league-worst minus-40.5 (!!!!) NET Rating in the third.
The story of the night for the Heat was Tyler Herro, who dominated offensively with 34 points, five rebounds and seven assists on 12-of-20 shooting and 8-of-13 from 3-point range. There weren’t many positives thereafter.
Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo did not have a strong impact in the losing effort. Butler scored 15 points with four rebounds and two steals on 6-of-9 shooting while Adebayo tallied just 11 points and four rebounds in 33 minutes. The latter’s impact was nullified by Towns throughout the evening.
Spoelstra went nine-deep without much production from the bench. Jaime Jaquez Jr. got out to a strong start, but finished with eight points, eight rebounds and four assists; Dru Smith saw 16 minutes of action with two points, three blocks (strips) and four boards; Duncan Robinson’s struggles from beyond the arc continued, missing four of his five long-range attempts.
Miami’s struggles against good teams continued. New York entered the evening with one of the NBA’s worst defenses through the early portion of the season, yet the Heat posted a 112.6 offensive rating (57th percentile); New York, for perspective, placed in the 86th percentile or better in effective field goal percentage (59.8; 86th), offensive rating (123.4; 88th) and halfcourt offensive rating (117.5; 98th), per Cleaning The Glass.
That’s an ideal recipe if the team’s best players don’t play as expected–which is what all of this comes down to in the end. The Heat won’t win many games if their best players don’t consistently show up–especially when the game calls for it.
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zach edys started from day 1 spo
A big part of the problem for Heat is Bam’s role. Apparently, his excellent mid-range shot is no longer an option. Spo wants everybody to shoot more threes. Now they are doing it at the expense of point blank twos. WTF!
Herro and Rozier are finding their roles. Butler is slowly gaining his footing. But Bam is the odd man out! Plus, he needs support in the paint!!!
Fix this Spo or you are going to have one disgruntled Bam and a very mediocre team on your hands!!!
https://sircharlesincharge.com/bam-adebayo-should-be-offended-by-how-the-miami-heat-has-mishandled-his-role?utm_campaign=FanSided+Daily&utm_source=FanSided+Daily&utm_medium=email&sc=e0273490fd355e2c28bdb25751d41af65a4dd80936ff00a80be9866c97887955
Did not watch the 4th quarter and must say that I am quite surprised at the final score sheet.
I thought the Heat had found a Brunson stopper in Dru Smith. He literally made it difficult for Brunson when he was on the court.
Carl Anthony who has not played well since joining the Knicks, did so against the Heat. That stung.
During the game, I understand that Carl Anthony is a veteran but I wonder if Jovic will have bothered Carl more with his longer arm length instead of having the smaller Bam on Carl. Also that would have given Jovic some experience on guarding a star veteran.
Just a thought.
So I just seen on bleacher report that giannis has us as one of his preferred destinations, if he wants to get traded. I wonder what we would have to give up for a guy like that? Might have to do a 3 team trade for him.
That would require some serious magic, I guess.
Yes definitely, but one thing for sure is Jimmy would have to be traded because spacing between giannis,butler, and bam wouldn’t work.
Yes, but we can never pull of such trade if Jimmy keep playing like he does this season. We were expecting improvement and instead he got even worse.
True that, but we still got time to improve until the deadline.
Bam, Larsson, Ware, Jaquez, an arm, a leg and two testicles. And we’re all out of testicles.
Got to hand it to the Knicks GM. He’s made quite a few nice acquisitions, Brunson, KAT, Anunoby, Hart, Bridges, Payne, and Precious, those are some big improvements. Trades can be made. They made the moves in several different ways, including getting KAT by turning a couple of quality players and a pick into a star.
Yes, Knicks’ GM definitely didn’t stand pat. They sucked for years or decades before Brunson. Now they are a contending team I guess and managed to make good additions and trades. But they went all in with the Bridges trade, 5 firsts, 1 second and a swap, that is insane.
Uh, New York sent Bojan Bogdanovic and five 1st-round draft picks to Brooklyn in exchange for Mikal Bridges. We don’t have 5 draft picks from now until the apocalypse.
More than 16 minutes a game to someone shooting 26.7 fg% and 22.7 3p% while giving zero minutes to a 7 foot shot blocker and zero minutes yesterday to Highsmith or Burks. Something has to change.
We shouldn’t blame players other then maybe Bam and Jimmy. Duncs shooting will come around sooner or later.
I think we should blame Spo. Its clear, that players should contribute in the following order:
-Jimmy
-Bam
-Herro
-Rosier
-JJJ
(The rest)
Right now the order is:
-Herro
Well behind
-Jimmy, Rosier
well behind
-Bam and the rest.
Team with Tyler as the best player wont win many games.
I agree. Jimmy and Bam play like role players this season. And this does not correspond to the salaries.
I agree that Spo is to blame regarding the rotations. Dunc is cold, so it does not make sense to keep him in the game for so long. While Highsmith getting DNPs and we miss his defense. This is not right.
I’ve already said that Spo, Butler, and Bam are to blame for the loss. But I won’t back off the idea that Duncan should be benched in favor of Highsmith or Burks when he is doing as poorly as he has been since the season started.
Dunc is career 40 % 3p shooter. When he is on, he can bring more to the team than those two.
I guess Spo is waiting for him to start hitting something. But I agree, Dunc those have a lot more time to show up. Two or three similar games and he should be in freezer.
In 13 years, Burks is a 38.3% 3 point shooter and 81% on free throws. He is smaller, but more athletic, and a better defender. Yes, when Duncan is on, he is a very good 3 point shooter. But when he’s not…….
Well, ok, but with Heat scoring average of 106 ppg I would bet on Dunc over Burks to provide the missing 20 ppg to match Boston or Cleveland. True that the first would have about 1 % chance to get those, and the other 0.1 % chance. So I m with Spo about that.
One of those agree to disagree moments. 😀
Better then disagree to disagree 🙂
Haha!
team with bam as best player ditto
This is exactly the type of game, which leaves bad taste in mount. We were beaten by NY, which is not particularly good right now. Against stronger team this would be a clear blow out, as it was against Orlando.
In first half and in first minutes of 3th qt, it seem to me, that at least Herro, Jovic , JJJ were playing according their strengths. Bam and Butler werent. . Later, there was some heroism from Rosier and Herro, all the rest felt apart.
With Bam and Butler playing like that, we don’t have any chance against stronger teams.
It was a shame watching Towns bullying both Butler and Bam (and the rest). Those two would eat him for breakfast a year or two ago. Its hard to say, but yesterday Bam and Jimmy were softies.
Heat are undersized everywhere, have only two players who are 3ball threats, weak defensively, terrible rebounding team…what can we expect? Can only coach’em up so much.
Right now its early but so far ty has been our best player.Hats off to him for strengthening his body to become an all round better player.Also ty leaves it on the floor every night.Like fellow fans have pointed out jimmys not a ss anymore day in day out,Every good team has a ss some have 2.So we know from a talent level as 30 man has pointed out just not good enough.So as the wannabe proctologist has pointed out a trade or maybe put in a guy who will eliminate at least 10 pts from our oponents a nightThe second chance pts are hurting us.What does a thomas bryant do for u not much spo.Free ware as my close buddy rc likes to say.Give the man some minutes and he’ll never see the pine again.
We are 0-2 against playoff teams.
Whats happening with Bam? He should be stepping up as the next superstar but he was super quiet all around.
I am also worried about our free throw. Yes,the Heat are getting calls but they are not converting it. I am calling you out JJJ. 50% FT along with 2-10 fga will not cover it.
I thought Burke and Locksmith should have gotten Duncan and Dru” minutes especially for defense and rebounding purposes.
Wondering if Bam’s offseason and his playing for team USA is to blame for this rough start. But it is not like there were that many games at the Olympics and due to stacked roster his playtime wasn’t excessive.
I totally agree that Locksmith and Burke deserved to get minutes instead of Duncan and Dru.
I am pretty sure its the new offensive style that the Heat created, More Inside the paint/attacking the paint and more threes,its also designed to spread the floor to make those 2 option easier which means sacrificing Bam’s securing his positioning for mid shots and its also forcing Bam to shoot 3s instead of easing him into it.It’s great for three level scoring guards but as you can see its uncomfortable for mid range shooting players .The offense also noticeably change that opponents can see it if Bam and or Jimmy is the one going to score but unlike Jimmy,who can create his own shot in the midrange with post moves, Bam doesnt have that many options.
Until/unless something changes for the better, we are an average team, usually able to beat bad teams, even on bad days and occasionally unable to beat good teams, even on good days. Heat are definitely NOT a great rebounding team. What’s going on with the turd quarters. Spo needs to work on his halftime motivational speech cuz the one he’s using ain’t working.
I’m not a proctologist, but…I can clearly see there is a big hole in the defense in the front court. WTF is going on with the free throws? We were one of the top FT shooting teams in the league.
More questions than answers. If things don’t look better in the next few weeks, Pat and Spo may need to have their “come to Jesus moment” regarding the future direction of the team.
Team and individual stats tell us a lot about what is going wrong so far. See below.
https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/teams/Miami-Heat/15/stats
This one made me sad. I kept thinking we were gonna see a run there at the end, but it never happened. Now we gotta wait until Saturday for more Heat.
This one hurts. We are healthy and because of that we can get a better gauge of where we stand as a team. After four games, it is looking like we are very similar in collective strength as we were last year, which is to be somewhat expected. The only change, Ware, is not a factor as yet.
Again, like I said on the game thread, we have four very good players, but no superstar to carry us, and a lot of varying degrees of decent role players. We need one more very good player, especially at a position of need. Ware could become that player, but it will probably take some time, maybe all year, till he gets there.
It’s not as much the rotations, although I would like to see more Ware, it’s more the talent level. It’s a collective strength sport, where each player has their moments in games or between them where they are on or off. The very good players just have more of those effective moments, either offensively or on defense. And, as the game goes on, it gets harder to score and by the end of the game, usually only the very good to great players are scoring.
So, we need a trade, or Ware to emerge, or we are looking pretty play in-ish after four. I wish we could do something to improve. I think it’s pretty clear now we need it.
I agree with most of what you said and we definitely do need to make a trade for major improvement. I disagree with you about the Rotations though because that was one of the reasons we lost. We have a middling to weak bench. Add to the fact, we have the slowest pace in league, worst 3rd quarter scoring, last in rebounding, and no go to superstar. So bench scoring is important and Rotations need to be fixed. Until love comes back, ware should get bryant minutes, even if some say he’s not ready I believe he would be better in those minutes because of length and defense. Kat would be under 30 with ware guarding him, also Hart was outhustling Bryant for rebounds. I’ll give him credit though had a good first half. Also Duncan should be in back of the Rotation fighting for minutes with Burks. There is no reason for our 2nd best perimeter defender to not get any minutes. In My opinion until love and jrich come back, the bench unit should be Jaques, locksmith, ware, and 9th spot should be a match up based preference between dunc,burks,and dru…. because spo rarely runs a 10 man lineup.
Alright now this one really got to me