There will always be peaks and valleys throughout an 82-game season. The Miami Heat’s first peak was great. Their offense was taking the league by storm, seemingly scoring 120-130-plus points every night — capped by a six-game win streak.
Though they’ve recently hit their first valley, suffering a four-game losing streak — two losses to the Orlando Magic and two more to the Sacramento Kings and Dallas Mavericks, bottom-feeders out West.
The Heat are still figuring out which combinations work — and which don’t — with a revolving door of injuries (and returns). It’s been an up-and-down trek for Tyler Herro on both sides of the ball. And a lot of their recent struggles have, predictably, invited some interesting internet chatter.
“If we do something good, everybody’s up in arms, saying we’re going to be a championship team,” Heat guard Norman Powell said, according to ClutchPoints’ Zachary Weinberger. “And you’ll go through a couple losses, miss a couple shots, people are going to be in your DMs and putting out memes and information about how there’s a problem.”
As a wise man once said, there’s winning and there’s misery. Even for the 25th game on a random Tuesday in December!
“We know it’s going to take a second for everybody to get comfortable when guys are coming in and out of the lineup, roles changing,” Powell added. “Minutes are up and down, just trying to figure out how we want to play, who’s going to be on the floor.”
Since his return, Herro is averaging 23.2 points, 5.0 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game. He’s shooting 50.5 percent from the floor, 40.5 percent from 3-point range and 92.3 percent from the free-throw line. The team’s pace has come to a screeching halt relative to what it was to start the season. In five December games, they own a 102.1 pace (9th-fastest) compared to a 106.1 pace beforehand.
It’s a small sample, but noteworthy nonetheless.
Miami’s shotmaking has also been worse, bleeding into its defense, which hasn’t generated as many stops as it once was. Its shotmaking has fallen off the map over its four-game skid — and that will eventually correct itself. Not to mention, Herro is still trying to jell alongside Norman Powell — plus Davion Mitchell and Andrew Wiggins, among others, whom he doesn’t have a ton of previous experience with.
We will see if the Heat can snap their skid Monday against the Toronto Raptors inside Kaseya Center at 7:30 p.m. EST.
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We do rise and fall with each peak and valley. But, beyond the overreaction there are some trends that are holding up, and that is that things are exactly like they seem, we are a slightly above average team with a collective player strength level that, when matched up against the rest of the league, holds up accordingly.
The truth is we can pine for acquisitions and trades that can upgrade this team or we can sit back and enjoy the ride and hope that next year we are closer to really being competitive. I plan to do a little of both. And yes, also continue to overreact, but maybe with a little bit of a twinkle in my eye. Or maybe that’s just Christmas.
I posted that in a previous thread and said I’d do it in a heartbeat. I was not the least concerned about whether or not Horford could provide much, because he was just a salary throw-in. Anything he could give would be icing on the cake. The proposal also left the Heat with 13 players, meaning they could add 1 or 2 more. And Podziemski is a very young decent player. The starting lineup of Bam, Giannis, Wiggins, Powell, and Mitchell would be dynamite.