Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra reacts on the court in the first half of their NBA basketball game against the Toronto Raptors at Kaseya Center in Miami on December 23, 2025. PHOTO BY AL DIAZ adiaz@miamiherald.com
Not all losses are created equal.
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was left encouraged by some of the things he saw in Friday’s road loss to the Boston Celtics, playing a competitive game despite missing three starters in Tyler Herro, Davion Mitchell and Andrew Wiggins because of injuries.
Spoelstra even found some positives in Sunday’s road loss to the New York Knicks, as the Heat made it a possession game down the stretch but ultimately couldn’t overcome a 47-point performance from Knicks guard Jalen Brunson and the Knicks’ 20 three-point makes.
But the Heat’s third straight loss, an ugly 112-91 home blowout defeat to the Toronto Raptors on Tuesday night, left Spoelstra shocked and disappointed.
“This is not what I would have predicted,” Spoelstra said following Tuesday’s 21-point loss. “I thought we were ready. I thought we had a good session this morning. I thought coming off of our last two games, on the road, even though there were losses, there were way more good things than negative things. In the New York game, we competed with a great spirit. That kind of game, you win a lot of games. But I don’t even know right now.”
The Heat is left searching for answers, dropping eight of its last nine games to fall back to .500 at 15-15 after its strong 14-7 start to the season.
“These are the times when we need to obviously get closer together because this is a very down and [expletive] moment,” Heat captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo said. “No matter how short or how long the skid is, you just got to figure it out as a whole.”
The Heat has plenty to figure out, as the defense and offense have struggled during this rough patch.
With a league-worst 2-8 record in December, the Heat has posted the NBA’s 18th-ranked defensive rating and 27th-ranked offensive rating this month. Entering December, the Heat had the NBA’s third-ranked defensive rating and 13th-ranked offensive rating through its first 20 games of the season.
“We have a game and an identity that we can wrap our mind around,” Spoelstra said, with the Heat idle until taking on the Hawks in Atlanta on Friday. “It’s about consistently bringing that kind of competitive force defensively, collectively. We’re a very good team defensively. We can be top five when we really commit to it and understand how important it is. Offensively, there are things where it can look great at times.”
Heat guard Norman Powell believes some of the team’s recent struggles come down to “not having the attention to detail.” He led a timeout huddle late in Tuesday’s blowout loss to the Raptors to deliver that message, sitting in Spoelstra’s chair and sternly delivering that message to his teammates.
“There were a few times in the game where coach draws up something or puts together something that we got to go out there and execute, and we just totally do something completely opposite,” Powell said. “Just make it up and not having the attention to detail. So I was pretty frustrated because it’s happened not only this game, but a few times in this tough stretch that we’re going through. And we’re a young team, but we got to focus on the details of the game.”
Things were going so well for the Heat just a few weeks ago, standing seven games above .500 earlier this month. But the Heat is back at .500 for Christmas and trending in the wrong direction.
“I think it all starts individually,” Heat sixth man Jaime Jaquez Jr. said. “We all got to look ourselves in the mirror. I know I can do a lot more. There’s a lot more that I know I can bring to this team. And just got to go dig deep and find it, bring it out. That goes for every one of us. It’s a tough stretch right now, and we’re really going to discover who we are in this time. And I’m confident in this team, I’m confident in this locker room. It’s something that we’re just going to have to battle through.”
ROZIER UPDATE
Attorneys for Heat guard Terry Rozier are asking for a federal judge to dismiss charges filed against him, arguing that the government overstepped when it accused Rozier of wire fraud stemming from his alleged involvement in a sports betting scheme.
“The government has billed this case as involving ‘insider betting’ and ‘rigging’ professional basketball games,” Rozier’s attorney Jim Trusty wrote in a legal document obtained by ESPN. “But the indictment alleges something less headline-worthy: that some bettors broke certain sportsbooks’ terms of use.”
The government’s response is due by Feb. 2.
Rozier, who was arrested on the morning of Oct. 23 at the Heat’s Orlando hotel following the team’s Oct. 22 season-opening road loss to the Magic, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment earlier this month and was released on $3 million bond secured by his home in South Florida.
Rozier, 31, has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He is accused of providing inside information to co-conspirators about his intentions to leave a March 2023 game early due to a foot injury while he was with the Charlotte Hornets, which enabled them to place large bets on him not reaching statistical thresholds.
In its indictment, the FBI alleges that Rozier told Deniro Laster, a childhood friend, that he planned to remove himself from the Hornets’ game against the New Orleans Pelicans on March 23, 2023. Laster allegedly sold this information to two betters for about $100,000.
Rozier left the game after just nine minutes with five points, four rebounds and two assists. The indictment alleges that he paid for Laster to travel to Philadelphia to collect the proceeds from the scheme, and that Laster then drove to Rozier’s home in Charlotte, North Carolina, to count the money with him.
The indictment does not detail the evidence against Rozier.
“The indictment does not allege that Mr. Rozier ever placed a bet, whether himself or through a proxy, on any NBA game,” Trusty wrote in the motion to dismiss. “Nor does it allege that he knew that Laster intended to sell this information to others, or that using it to place wagers would violate the Betting Companies’ rules.”
The NBA placed Rozier on paid leave shortly after his arrest in October, with the Heat continuing to list him as “not with team” on its injury reports this season.
The NBA is currently having the Heat place Rozier’s salary in an interest-bearing account, pending the resolution of his legal case.