Miami struggled to score early with Kevin Love and Terry Rozier bricking the first four looks. The Heat actually didn’t score until the 7:39 mark when Jaime and the reserves broke the drought.
Really an embarrassing start for the Heat while the Pistons rattled off 10 straight. The Heat were thoroughly outclassed by Detroit until the end of the first, finally bringing energy on defense and chipping away at the Piston’s lead. It’s worth pointing out that the offensive surge came from the reserves with the starters coming up lame. The Heat would put up their lowest scoring quarter so far this season.
Miami’s shot selection improved slightly but it didn’t matter as Malik Beasley took advantage of the porous defense. Bam wouldn’t score his first bucket until the 8:52 of the second quarter – an alarming aspect of this game and the season as a whole so far.
The Heat eventually found its groove posting a 12-2 run led by Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson. With Duncan and Herro operating flame throwers the Heat were suddenly within four. Bam even threw in a three to get the Heat within one, and scoring again on the next possession to steal the lead.
Despite its short surge the Heat would go into halftime down six.
Miami was better to start the second half getting contributions from Kevin Love, Haywood Highsmith and Tyler Herro. Spo would shift Miami back into a zone, but second chance buckets kept its effectiveness to a minimum. The Heat and Pistons were largely even for much of the quarter, but Jaime Jaquez Jr. was the difference maker towards the end of the quarter. Ware also put up some highlight plays, but the Heat still found itself down seven going into the fourth.
Miami was weak in the fourth quarter giving up rebound after rebound, letting Detroit score with ease and not doing enough on offense. The Pistons did not let up on offense keeping Miami out of reach despite its best efforts (and by that I mean mostly Herro’s efforts). However things changed with Tyler Herro hitting two clutch threes down the stretch to tie things up and send it to OT.
The Heat were different in OT delivering on big plays (see the Bam Slam and Duncan second chance bucket) but still making mistakes on defense. Still even with mistakes, Miami locked in getting the ball to Tyler in the right moment to hit what looked like a game winner. With 1.1 seconds left Miami botched a Pistons inbounds play, and Spo would call a time-out he didn’t have. The technical foul would put the game out of reach, stealing what should have been double overtime. A heartbreaker, that should have never been.
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Herro is an all star this year.
Bam still out of the sync.
WTF?
What was that?
Unbelievable!
Its like you got the candy and somebody steal it.
Shoutout to Tyler. That dude has been so good this year. He’s easily been the best player on the Heat this season
The first 6:21 minutes of the game was a misconceived stratrgy of live by the 3 or die by the 3. The Heat took 5 unsuccessful 3 points attempts and had the score at 0-10 when Spo called the first time out. Before then, you can see the obvious effort of the Heat trying to find a perimeter shooter to shoot the 3. Even when a guy was open to take a mid range J or go to the rim, he was looking to pass to the perimeter. I was more perplexed that the Piston players did not intercept any of those outward bound passes by the Heat players to the perimeter. Considering that it was done by all 5 starters within this period, it was obvious that it was Spo’s strategy going into the game. The guys could at least drive to the rim and start picking up fouls on the Piston defenders in the paint. Thank fully this all changed after the time out called by Spo at the 7:39 minute mark when the 2nd unit came in and mixed things up.However, it seemed that those sour 6:21 minutes
for the Heat had boosted the confidence of the Piston players and perhaps bouyed them to victory. Spo, please take my advice if you are reading this. The Heat is not yet an excellent 3 point shooting team, so please, please,please do not repeat this live by the 3 or die by it strategy as orchestrated in the first 6:21 minutes of this game, if you want to achieve a meaningfull season going forward.
Go Heat, Go!
I wasn’t even mad lol I just laughed
That’s sort of my reasoning. Only along for the ride this year. Keeping my expectations in check along with my emotions. From that perspective it was an entertaining game.
Same philosophy here
I was mad for a minute or two.
But the game was lost before wild Herros minutes.
Starting line up in first half was totally helpless. It was painful to watch.