Mitchell Robinson #23 and Miles McBride #2 of the New York Knicks go after the rebound as Kel'el Ware #7 and Pelle Larsson #9 of the Miami Heat look on in the first half at Madison Square Garden on November 14, 2025 in New York City. Elsa Getty Images
It’s only fitting that the Miami Heat’s all-time leading rebounder pointed out the Heat’s biggest flaw early this season, especially while three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo has been sidelined.
“I’m enjoying watching them. But they’ve got to rebound,” Heat icon Udonis Haslem said in his role as NBA studio analyst for Prime Video during Friday’s pregame show ahead of Miami’s game in New York. “No rebounds, no rings fellas.”
The Heat (7-6) then went out and continued to struggle on the boards, falling to the New York Knicks 140-132 on Friday night at Madison Square Garden. It marked the Heat’s second straight loss after starting the season with a 7-4 record and dropped the Heat to 1-1 for the four-game group-stage of the NBA Cup in-season tournament.
The Knicks grabbed 20 offensive rebounds, including eight offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter. Knicks center Mitchell Robinson led the charge with eight offensive rebounds.
The Heat actually outscored the Knicks 23-20 in second-chance points despite finishing with five fewer offensive rebounds than New York. But Heat coach Erik Spoelstra and players know that advantage in second-chance points is misleading.
After all, the Heat enters Saturday with the NBA’s third-worst defensive rebounding percentage (the percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs) this season at 66.1%.
“It’s costing us games now,” Spoelstra said following Friday’s loss when discussing the recent lack of rebounding, with the Heat now in the middle of a two-day break before hosting the Knicks on Monday at Kaseya Center. “That’s where we are and we’ve said it enough that we have to fix it. We’re being stubborn about it, the things that we need to do better. I feel like we’re fully capable of doing it. Is it easy? Winning is not easy in this league.”
Rebounding certainly hasn’t been easy since Adebayo went out with a sprained toe.
The Heat has posted the NBA’s 29th-ranked defensive rebounding percentage at 61% over the last five games while Adebayo has been unavailable after recording the NBA’s 14th-ranked defensive rebounding percentage at 69.8% with Adebayo available for the first eight games of the season. Some of that is because of Adebayo’s actual rebounding, but the more subtle part is Adebayo’s reliable box-out ability often works to take the opponent’s top rebounder away from the ball.
Further proof of the Adebayo effect: The Heat has a defensive rebounding percentage of 74% when Adebayo is on the court for a number that would rank second-best in the NBA among teams this season. Without Adebayo on the court, the Heat’s defensive rebounding percentage plummets to 62.3% for a number that would rank as the worst in the league among teams this season.
“It’s just a collective buy-in,” Heat forward Jaime Jaquez said when asked how the team can fix its rebounding problem. “I think as a group, we understand that we don’t want to keep losing in the fashion that we have. We want to be a great team. We just got to go back to the drawing board, go back to watching film, understand what we need to do to clean this stuff up. We know what the problem is. It’s just accomplishing it is really the difficult part.”
Dru Smith #12 of the Miami Heat and Mitchell Robinson #23 of the New York Knicks go after the loose ball in the second half at Madison Square Garden on November 14, 2025 in New York City. Elsa Getty Images
The fear is the Heat’s lack of size could lead to rebounding proving to be a fatal flaw this season.
With Adebayo unavailable, the Heat has often played 6-foot-10 and 240-pound Nikola Jovic as the backup center behind fill-in starting center Kel’el Ware. In addition, the 6-foot-7 and 210-pound Andrew Wiggins and the 6-foot-5 and 215-pound Pelle Larsson are currently playing as the Heat’s starting forwards.
With Adebayo and Ware the only traditional centers on the Heat’s standard roster, the only other option at the position who’s currently signed to a deal is undrafted rookie two-way contract center Vlad Goldin.
“Immediately after the game, I immediately texted Kel’el and I said, ‘Get all the film with Mitchell Robinson in the game, watch all the film, every offensive rebound he got on you, how he positioned himself early and pushed you under the basket,” Haslem said during Prime Video’s NBA coverage late Friday night. “You can’t rebound if the ball is not in front of you. You have to have the ball in front of you if you want to rebound.
“And the first thing he said was, ‘You’re absolutely right. I’m going to get the film and it won’t happen again.’ I think he’ll be better the next game.”
If history is any indication, though, the Heat’s rebounding will eventually stabilize when Adebayo returns. Miami has finished each of the last three seasons with a top-five defensive rebounding percentage despite playing mostly undersized lineups for much of that stretch.
“We pride ourselves on our rebounding. It just has to improve,” Spoelstra said. “The league is also changing. We have to adjust to that. More teams are crashing four guys and crashing their perimeter players. A lot of times cutting off-ball, now that cutter becomes the most dangerous offensive rebounder. We just need to make that adjustment and have more awareness with it. We’re fully capable of that.”
One thing is for sure, though, the Heat’s rebounding numbers need to improve because allowing opponents to consistently finish with an edge in field-goal attempts is not a sustainable winning formula.
With Miami losing the offensive rebounding battle in seven straight games, the opponent has put up more field-goal attempts than the Heat in six of the last seven games.
Making matters worse, the Heat entered Saturday allowing an NBA-high 20.1 second-chance points per game this season.
“Those plays are just like deflating plays,” Heat guard Davion Mitchell said following Friday’s loss to the Knicks “They got a lot of 50-50 balls that turned into threes, a lot of 50-50 balls that we could have got in transition and scored. Obviously, we were doing really good in transition and pushing the pace, it’s the reason why they went zone. So if we get those 50-50 balls, like cut the offensive rebounds in half, then I think we win that game.”
Davion Mitchell believes he and the rest of the Heat’s guards can help solve some of the team’s rebounding issues by doing their part on the perimeter.
“I’ve got to get those rebounds, those kinds of longer rebounds,” Davion Mitchell said. “I can’t just always think Kel’el will get every rebound. I got to get those. All our guys got to get those long rebounds, especially when they shoot a lot of threes, and they get tipped out, we got to be there just to get those rebounds.”
Yes, the Heat is playing at the NBA’s fastest pace and averaging the second-most points in the league this season. But none of that really matters if Miami is going to continue to be one of the NBA’s worst rebounding teams.
Heat coaches and players know that, which is why finding a solution to the team’s rebounding problem has become a top priority.
“Look, we’ve said it enough,” Spoelstra said before banging the table during his postgame press conference on Friday. “The staff, we’re going to get to work, we’ll find out what’s what. And we have to correct. But we feel that it’s fully in our ability to do it. And hopefully the pain of losing some of these games due to that will change our behavior. And I believe it will.”