The Good, Bad And Ugly: 2025-26 Miami Heat Regular Season

There’s still one game left in the 2025-26 regular season, but the Miami Heat will either finish 9th or 10th at the conclusion of Sunday’s game versus the Atlanta Hawks. It’s also not too early to start peeling back the onion that was the Heat’s regular season … which likely made some of us cry (internally). What were the good, bad and ugly from it?! Let’s examine!

The Good:

Norman Powell becomes a first-time All-Star:

Powell arrived in Miami at a bargain price. And while he had his flaws, he turned in his first career All-Star campaign, averaging 21.7 points and 3.5 rebounds on 47.0 percent shooting, and 38.0 percent from 3-point range and 82.4 percent from the free-throw line. He won’t play tomorrow, but he’s currently on pace to be the Heat’s third different leading scorer in three years.

Kasparas Jakucionis’ emergence in rotation:

Jakucionis didn’t garner a ton of on-ball usage as a rookie. But he was still more impactful than his numbers suggested. He averaged 6.2 points, 2.6 rebounds and 2.5 assists on 41.6 percent shooting from 3-point range, including 47.3 percent on catch-and-shoot threes. He’s one of their best passers and one of their better point-of-attack defenders with good positional size.

Jaime Jaquez’s finish to season from deep:

Jaime Jaquez’s entire season has been phenomenal, but let’s hone in on his shooting. It remains to be seen how real this leap is, but Jaquez is shooting 41.8 percent from 3-point range over his last 18 games … after shooting 30.2 percent over his first 197 games. His biggest leap has been from the corner, where he’s 15-of-24. Obviously, expecting him to shoot 40-plus percent over a full season isn’t realistic. But if he’s able to carry some of this momentum as a shooter into his fourth season, his value increases exponentially.

Kel’el Ware’s highs:

Kel’el Ware’s highs are … exceptionally high. He had four 20-point, 15-rebound double-doubles, four games of four-plus blocks and 17 games of five-plus offensive rebounds. He also grew as a shooter, albeit on low volume, knocking down 38.6 percent of his three attempts per game.

Wilt, Bam, Kobe:

We’re never going to stop reminding you.

The Bad:

Another poor Erik Spoelstra season:

This is the third consecutive below-average season from Spoelstra, who’s still one of the best coaches in the NBA. But I don’t think we can say he’s the best; he hasn’t coached like a top-5 — or dare I say top-10 — coach in three years. At the end of the day, the common denominator is the roster construction, which is quite poor. But Spoelstra hasn’t gotten more than the sum of his parts.

Fourth-straight play-in appearance:

The Heat are the third team in NBA History to make the play-in four times. The other two are the Atlanta Hawks, who are avoiding this year, and the Golden State Warriors, whose fourth play-in appearance will be next week.

I’m tired of the play-in; our HHH family is tired of the play-in; you’re probably tired of the play-in; so is Tyler Herro, Erik Spoelstra, Bam Adebayo, etc. But that’s their fortune.

Kel’el Ware’s lows:

Kel’el Ware’s lows are … very low. Despite his oftentimes gaudy defensive statistics, he’s still not a good defender. His inconsistent motor is a big problem, regardless of how many minutes he plays. He’s still 21-years-old with plenty of room to grow, but it wasn’t difficult to see why he still wasn’t always high in Erik Spoelstra’s trust tree.

Trade Deadline inactivity:

You could also put this into the ugly tier. But Miami’s trade deadline inactivity — after swinging and missing again on the Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes, is beyond incomprehensible. A trade to make a trade is delusion, but you cannot convince me that a Giannis-or-nothing approach at this current juncture is the right one. The Heat front office’s forward-thinking ability it objectively bad, which was on display ahead of the deadline.

The Ugly:

Tyler Herro and Norman Powell’s fit:

It did not work; they only played 20 games together, and they’re both one-way scoring guards who don’t impact the game when they’re not scoring. Their NET was a minus-5.7 when they shared the floor together, including a minus-18.7 across 214 possessions over the last month.

Nikola Jovic’s season:

It was another incomplete season from Nikola Jovic, whose 3-point percentage steered off a cliff. He still has the skills and the talent to be a very good rotation player, and he’s improved considerably on defense, where he’s shown he can defend multiple positions at an above-average level. But Jovic’s season left plenty to be desired.

An empty 13:

No, this has nothing to do with Bam Adebayo. But the Miami Heat went 0-13 against the Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics and Orlando Magic, getting outscored by an average of 10.5 points over those games.

Heat’s defense the last month:

Since March 10, Miami’s defense has been the fourth-worst in the NBA, worse than the Chicago Bulls, Indiana Pacers, Utah Jazz and Sacramento Kings. Over that span, they have had eight games where they surrendered 130-plus points per 100 possessions, including two allowing 140-plus points, according to Cleaning The Glass.

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