On this week’s Heat Check: What should the Miami Heat do ahead of the NBA’s Feb. 5 trade deadline? And the “Mayor of NBA Threads” tells his story. By Pierre Taylor
Saturday night’s 31-point victory over the Utah Jazz marked the Miami Heat’s third-most lopsided win of the season. But it was what happened hours before tipoff that could end up being the most memorable moment of the day.
After losing to the Trail Blazers in Portland on Thursday, a frustrated Heat team set up a team dinner in Salt Lake City on Friday night and then had a productive team meeting led by coach Erik Spoelstra on Saturday morning.
“We had a team dinner last night,” Heat forward Nikola Jovic said following Saturday night’s 147-116 win over the Jazz at Delta Center. “This morning, Spo kind of went off on us, especially on Bam [Adebayo], which I think kind of set the tone. When you start talking to the captain first, we just knew we had to take more responsibility and be more locked in. So I think it’s simple as that. Just maybe we had a little more pressure on us and it helped.”
The Heat took notice, taking care of business against a struggling Jazz team behind one of its highest-scoring games and best offensive rebounding performances in franchise history to improve to 2-2 on its five-game West Coast trip. The Heat will close the trip on Sunday night against the Suns in Phoenix.
“It definitely clears the air, clears the room,” Adebayo said of Spoelstra’s message to him and the rest of the team ahead of Saturday night’s game in Salt Lake City. “All being said, we like when coach confronts us, it’s just he got to be prepared when we burp back. We’re all grown men at the end of the day. So if we don’t like what he said, we can always have a man-to-man conversation.”
The Heat, which entered as the fourth-highest scoring team in the NBA at 119.3 points per game, tied a season-high with 147 points on 43.5 percent shooting from the field and 19-of-47 (40.4 percent) shooting from three-point range on Saturday. It also tied the third-highest scoring performance for the Heat in franchise history
The Heat has now reached the 140-point mark in a league-leading eight games this season. No other team in the NBA has reached the 140-point mark in more than three games this season.
The Heat also outscored the Jazz 23-9 in second-chance points behind an eye-opening 26-7 edge in offensive rebounds. The 26 offensive rebounds are a season-high for the Heat and tie for the sixth-most that the Heat has grabbed in a game in franchise history, with the last time Miami recorded 26 or more offensive rebounds in a game coming all the way back in January 1994.
But it was the defense that Spoelstra was most pleased with on Saturday after the Heat allowed the Trail Blazers to shoot 20 of 50 (40 percent) from three-point range on Thursday despite owning the worst team three-point shooting percentage in the NBA.
On Saturday, the Heat only allowed the Jazz to score at a rate of just 104.5 points per 100 possessions. Miami now enters Sunday with a perfect 12-0 record this season when posting a defensive rating under 105 points allowed per 100 possessions.
“We talked about in our meeting this morning that we did not defend in the Portland game,” Spoelstra said Saturday. “It doesn’t matter what the stats were. It’s just there’s a feeling and the Blazers did not feel us enough. And we paid the price for that, it ended up being from the three-point line. And then tonight we wanted to make sure that we came out with more force.”
Adebayo led the charge with a team-high 26 points and 15 rebounds (seven offensive rebounds) in the Heat’s win over the Jazz.
“Bam set the tone for that,” Spoelstra said. “It was on the offensive glass, it was defensively calling out schemes, rebounding the defensive glass, and then knocking down shots. He’s really showing his versatility right now offensively.”
Adebayo made clear that effort came from within and not from Saturday morning’s team meeting.
“I’m always going to try to rebound,” he said. “I’m always going to lead by example. That doesn’t have to be said. My job is what it is, to lead by example, and I’m going to continue to try to do that every night.”
For an up-and-down Heat team that continues to hover around the .500 mark, that’s the challenge. Playing to its winning formula every night.
“We know what we’re capable of, we just got to be more consistent with it,” Adebayo said. “That’s from top to bottom.”