The Miami Heat have fallen off a bit from their torrid start to the 2025-26 season, and on Thursday night, they lost their 20th game of the campaign in 41 games in a 119-114 loss to the Boston Celtics. It is quite worrying that the Heat have struggled more now that Tyler Herro has been playing more regularly, and a part of this may have to do with the drop-off in play from Kel'el Ware.
Ware seems to have reached the rock-bottom of his 2025-26 season on Thursday night; he played in just nine minutes, all of which came in the first half, and recorded just three points and a single board. Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra is not very impressed with Ware's play as of late, and the second-year big man has landed in the doghouse.
After the game, Spoelstra explained his reasoning behind benching Ware completely for the second half of their loss to the Celtics, which can be summed up as more of the Heat matching up better with their opponent.
“That's a tough matchup for him. In Boston, with all the coverages. He just has to stay ready. With Kel'el, I know that's a lightning rod topic. He needs to get back to where he was, seven, eight weeks ago where I and everybody in the building felt that he was stacking days,” Spoelstra said, via Zachary Weinberger, Heat beat reporter for ClutchPoints.
“He's stacking days in the wrong direction now.”
Erik Spoelstra would speak on not playing Kel’el Ware a single minute in the second half, credits matchup and speaks on wanting him to be where he was 7, 8 weeks ago where he was stacking good days.
Says it’s going the other way. #HeatNation pic.twitter.com/EKrdXYf09o
— Zachary Weinberger (@ZachWeinberger) January 16, 2026
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Are the Heat being unnecessarily hard on Kel'el Ware?
Miami Heat center Kel'El Ware (7) warms up against the Toronto Raptors at Kaseya Center.
Rhona Wise-Imagn Images
What makes coaching in the NBA so difficult is that there can be no winning with regards to how they handle certain situations. It's a certainty that Spoelstra wants Ware to thrive; when he was putting up dominant double-doubles and the Heat were winning, he was surely pleased with what he's seeing.
But Ware's effort comes and goes, and as a 21-year-old big man, that motor has got to stay switched on for the entire game, which is something that Spoelstra seems to want to drill into his mind.