Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s ugly 127-111 loss to the Sacramento Kings (6-17) on Saturday night at Kaseya Center to drop its third straight game. The Heat (14-10) now enters a two-day break before hitting the road for an NBA Cup quarterfinal game on Tuesday against the Magic in Orlando:
The Heat was undermanned on the second night of a back-to-back set, and it showed in Saturday’s blowout loss to the floundering Kings.
The Heat entered without a chunk of its rotation, missing starting guards Tyler Herro (right big toe contusion) and Davion Mitchell (right groin tightness). Miami was also without reserve guard Pelle Larsson on Saturday because of right hip flexor tightness.
The Heat was also playing just 24 hours after falling to the Magic 106-105 in Orlando on Friday night, with Saturday marking Miami’s third game in four nights.
But the Heat was still supposed to have enough against a struggling Kings team that entered with a dismal 5-17 record. The Kings, which were without starting center Domantas Sabonis because of a knee injury, entered Saturday on a four-game losing skid and with losses in 12 of their last 14 games.
It turns out the Heat didn’t have enough on Saturday.
“We didn’t have a lot of juice on either end of the floor,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
The Kings dominated the game from start to finish, pulling ahead by one point with 10:41 left in the second quarter and leading the rest of the way.
The Kings went on to enter halftime with a 17-point advantage, and it only got worse for the Heat in the second half.
The Heat trailed by as many as 28 points in the second half and had no answer for Kings guard Zach LaVine.
LaVine scored 18 points in the first quarter and 29 points in the first half on his way to erupting for a game-high 42 points on 12-of-24 shooting from the field, 8-of-13 shooting on threes and 10-of-11 shooting from the foul line to lead the Kings to the win.
The Kings totaled 127 points on 52.7 percent shooting from the field and 14-of-33 (42.4 percent) shooting from three-point range. The Heat recorded its second-worst single-game defensive rating of the season on Saturday, allowing 125.7 points per 100 possessions.
The Heat’s offense wasn’t much better, scoring just 78 points on 43.9 percent shooting from the field and 6-of-23 (26.1 percent) shooting from three-point range through the first three quarters to enter the fourth period in a 23-point hole.
The Heat made a late push to make a small dent in the Kings’ lead, pulling within 15 points with 3:09 left in the fourth quarter. But that’s the closest Miami got.
The Heat’s fast-pack attack was neutralized, with Saturday’s game played at a pace of 100.5 possessions per 48 minutes. That’s Miami’s third-slowest game of the season.
“We’ve got to get stops,” Heat captain Bam Adebayo said. “That’s the biggest thing on the radar. We’ve got to get stops and then also we’ve just got to move the ball.
The Heat’s leading duo of Adebayo and Norman Powell was relatively quiet, combining for just 27 points. Adebayo and Powell were both held out of the fourth quarter of the lopsided defeat.
Adebayo finished with nine points on 4-of-9 shooting from the field and 0-of-3 shooting from three-point range, seven rebounds and three assists in 25 minutes.
Powell ended the night with 18 points on 6-of-14 shooting from the field and 1-of-5 shooting from behind the arc, two rebounds and one assist in 26 minutes.
Jaime Jaquez Jr. scored a team-high 27 points for the Heat on 9-of-15 shooting from the field, 1-of-1 shooting on threes and 8-of-12 shooting from the foul line, six rebounds and six assists in 35 minutes.
“My biggest takeaway right now is can we win some games where it’s not at our identity,” Spoelstra said. “We’ll work on it Monday [at practice]. We’re going to work on getting more consistent to how we want to play, but this is the NBA. It’s not always going to go exactly how you want it to go, and competition has something to say about it. But the mental toughness that great teams figure out is you just figure out a way to win.”
Along with losing three straight games, the Heat has also dropped four of its last five games after a strong 13-6 start to the season.
“I don’t think we’re too concerned right now,” Powell said after Saturday’s loss. “If you look at the four of five and go back and see how we lost those games and where we’re at, we could easily be 4-1. But just got to get back to who we are, back to our identity, offensively, defensively, especially this game.
“No excuse coming back off a back-to-back. But just tightening up the little things and how we want to play, the flow and the play style that we want to get back to and that we’ve been having throughout the course of the year so far. We’re going to tighten some things up, take tomorrow off, let our bodies rest and recover. Come back Monday, watch some film, see how we can get better and then get ready for Orlando again.”
With Herro and other rotation players out Saturday, the Heat was forced to make another change to its starting lineup.
With two usual starters in Herro and Mitchell unavailable, the Heat opened Saturday’s game with a starting lineup of Dru Smith, Powell, Andrew Wiggins, Adebayo and Kel’el Ware. It marked the 10th different starting group that Miami has used through 24 games this season.
This had Smith making his first start of the season and just the third start of his NBA career after establishing himself as a fixture in the Heat’s bench rotation early this season. Smith logged double-digit minutes off the Heat’s bench in each of the first 23 games of the season before starting the 24th game on Saturday.
Like most of the players in the Heat’s rotation, Smith struggled Saturday. He finished with just four points on 1-of-6 shooting from the field and two assists in 19 minutes.
The Heat missed Mitchell’s play on both sides of the court, as he has been an efficient playmaker and one of the team’s top perimeter defenders this season.
“We know how important D-Mitch is to what we do offensively and defensively,” Powell said.
The Heat then opened the second half with another lineup, benching Ware to begin the third quarter.
Ware has already flashed his upside this season, grabbing double-digit rebounds in nine straight games in November and recording double-double stat lines in seven of those games.
But the 21-year-old Ware is far from a finished product, and this recent stretch has been proof of that.
Ware entered Saturday’s game with a negative plus/minus in four straight games, and he was on the bench for the entire fourth quarter of Friday’s loss in Orlando.
On Saturday, Ware began the second half on the bench after opening the game in the starting lineup. Jaquez started the third quarter in Ware’s place.
Ware eventually entered the game for his first action of the second half with 4:10 left in the third quarter.
Ware closed Saturday’s defeat with five points, six rebounds, two steals and two blocks in 30 minutes. He posted a negative plus/minus for the fifth straight game.
“Just looking for some juice, looking for something to kick-start just some energy,” Spoelstra said of his decision to start the second half with Jaquez instead of Ware. “It didn’t really work out that way. But I don’t know necessarily what would have. It wasn’t an indictment on Kel’el.”
The injuries and Smith’s promotion to the starting lineup led to extended playing time for Heat forward Nikola Jovic and rare playing time for two-way contract guard Jahmir Young.
Jovic’s rough start to the season led to him receiving his second DNP-CD (did not play, coach’s decision) of the season in Friday’s loss to the Magic, and both of those DNP-CDs came during the last five games.
But with the Heat’s roster depleted by injuries, Jovic received extended playing time and logged double-digit minutes on Saturday for just the second time in the last six games he has been available for.
Jovic recorded 12 points, two rebounds and six assists in 31 minutes off the bench in the Heat’s loss to the Kings.
For the 25-year-old Young, Saturday marked his first meaningful minutes of the season. Before playing eight minutes on Saturday, Young’s first four NBa appearances this season came late in lopsided wins.
Young, who has already appeared in six G League games with the Sioux Falls Skyforce this season as part of his two-way contract with the Heat, finished Saturday’s loss scoreless. He recorded one rebound and one assist.
Jovic and Young were part of a five-man Heat bench rotation that also included Jaquez, Keshad Johnson and Simone Fontecchio.
Fontecchio contributed 20 points on 4-of-9 shooting from three-point range on Saturday. It was a much-needed efficient shooting night for Fontecchio, who entered shooting 9 of 49 (18.4 percent) from behind the arc over his previous eight games.
Even with so many guys out for Saturday’s game, the Heat received some positive injury news ahead of the contest.
An MRI on Herro’s injured toe Saturday showed a right big toe contusion.
The toe contusion is not an issue that’s expected to keep Herro out for an extended period, but he did miss his second straight game with the injury in Saturday’s loss to the Kings. The Heat has labeled Herro as day-to-day.
“I just was going to wait until we found out what the deal was,” Spoelstra said when asked if he was relieved by the result of Herro’s MRI. “I try not to stress out about the things that you don’t know about or can’t control.”
This is welcome news after Herro already missed training camp, the preseason and the first 17 games of the regular season following left ankle surgery in September. After returning to make his season debut last week, Herro played in just five games before being sidelined with this toe issue.
The upcoming schedule also gives Herro the opportunity to recover without missing too many games.
After Saturday’s defeat, the Heat has two days off before taking on the Magic in Orlando in an NBA Cup quarterfinal game. The Heat then has at least three idle days and up to five idle days before its next game depending on the result of Tuesday’s in-season tournament matchup against the Magic.