Five takeaways from the Heat’s 116-113 win against the Bulls on Thursday night in Chicago:
▪ The Heat barely survived a furious late Chicago rally to move to 26-23.
The Heat seemed in control until Ayo Dosunmo caught fire and Miami’s offense repeatedly malfunctioned during a six-minute stretch of the fourth quarter.
Ahead by 11 at halftime and by six after three, Miami widened its lead before the Bulls closed to within 106-100 with just under six minutes left. The Bulls then couldn’t score on six consecutive possessions, but the Heat let the Bulls hang around.
Chicago drew to within five on Dosunmo’s three, then pulled to within 110-107 on a Dusunmo layup at the two minute mark. Norman Powell and Nic Vucevic exchanged baskets, leaving the Heat up three with 38 seconds left.
After a miss by Bam Adebayo and a missed follow shot by Andrew Wiggins, the Bulls briefly gained possession before a steal by Pelle Larsson.
But Dosunmo stole the ball from Powell with 12 seconds left, and seven seconds remaining on the shot clock. Immediately fouled in transition, Dosunmo nailed both free throws (his 14th and 15th points of the fourth quarter) to close Miami’s lead to 112-111 with 10 seconds to go.
But Powell nailed two free throws to put Miami back up by three with eight seconds to go.
Erik Spoelstra then did something he seldom does -- foul with a three-point lead so that Chicago couldn’t launch a three-pointer. Coby White hit two free throws to trim Miami’s lead to one, but Jaime Jaquez delivered a terrific in-bounds pass to Larsson for a layup to put the Heat back up by three with 4.6 seconds left.
White got an open three-point look but missed it with two seconds remaining, and the Heat escaped. White finished just 2 for 11 on a 14-point night.
Adebayo (20 points, 12 rebounds) and Jaquez (19 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals) were very good for much of the night.
And there were helpful contributions from Powell, Larsson, Kel’el Ware and Dru Smith.
After scoring 20 points in only nine of his first 31 appearances this season, Adebayo has now reached 20 points in six games in a row, while making a late push for an All-Star game bid. As usual, he was the fulcrum of a Heat defense that held the Bulls to 39 percent shooting.
Jaquez injected energy and offense into the second unit, as he has done far more often than not this season.
Smith was a spark off the bench, delivering 11 points, five rebounds, five assists and three steals in 22 minutes.
Powell scored 21 points and showed early signs of snapping out of a shooting slump, finishing 7 for 16 from the field and 2 for 4 on threes.
He entered in a 16 for 49 tailspin, with just four threes in his previous 28 attempts.
Larsson had 15 points, six rebounds, three assists and two steals; Miami is 11-2 when he scores 15 or more.
Miami outscored Chicago 60-38 in the paint and 19-7 in transition.
The Heat played without Tyler Herro, who remains out indefinitely with a rib injury and Davion Mitchell, who missed his fifth in a row with a sprained left shoulder.
The Bulls played without guard Josh Giddey, who has a hamstring injury.
▪ An improbable quintet continues to give the Heat remarkably impressive minutes.
A lineup of Adebayo, Nikola Jovic, Jaquez Jr., Simone Fontecchio and Smith entered having outscored teams by 51 points in their 57 minutes together this season.
That group began the night having scored 175 points in those 57 minutes, including 47 in 15 minutes in Wednesday’s loss to Orlando.
That five-man group was again very good on Thursday, outscoring the Bulls 17-7 in the first half and playing them to a draw (17-17) in their second half minutes.
“They’ve been giving us a very good boost,” Spoelstra said. “When we were at our best this season, our second unit was giving us great minutes, and we need that right now.”
Smith was very good, particularly in the fourth quarter.
Jovic was helpful for a time before airballing two three-pointers midway through the fourth quarter.
▪ Ware made the most of his modest minutes.
Spoelstra’s usage of that aforementioned Jovic lineup - combined with his recent reluctance to use Ware with Adebayo in tandem - has meant fewer minutes for Ware than earlier in the season.
After playing just seven minutes in the loss to Orlando, Ware was on the court for 12 minutes on Thursday and maximized them, finishing with 12 points, four rebounds, two assists and two blocks.
Ware entered second in the league in three-point shooting among centers (behind only Denver’s Nikola Jokic) and hit 3 for 4 threes against the Bulls on a night that he shot 4 for 6 overall.
He also entered third in the league in rebounds per 36 minutes.
The Heat has been outscored by 42 points in 266 minutes with Adebayo and Ware on the floor together this season; that’s 10th worst on the team. (Smith and Ware are the team’s worst two-man pairing, at minus 94).
▪ Spoelstra was asked a simple question before the game: Why has the Heat’s new offensive system resulted in a lot more points (120 per game compared with 110 last season) but no better offensive efficiency?
Miami entered third in the league in points per game (compared to 24th last season) but just 18th in points per 100 possessions at 113.9. That’s barely better than last season’s 112.4, which was 21st.
On Thursday, the Heat’s offense again bogged down late before the well-designed in-bounds pass from Jaquez to Larsson for a layup.
“I don’t know; it’s a good question,” Spoelstra said when asked why the offense isn’t more efficient. “I think our offense is trending in a much better direction. It’s all about efficiency. There’s some areas in the margins where we can be better. But overall, I think it’s just a way better fit for this roster. And on any given night, we can blow the doors off. So I would rather have that kind of explosiveness and work on the efficiency.
“We couldn’t do that last year. But then there’s both sides of the floor. We were defending great for the first three months of the season. Now we’ve had some slippage there. So we just have to put both sides of the floor together. We have great possibilities with our team.”
▪ This Heat-Bulls three-game series, common in baseball but extremely rare in the NBA, continues with matchups Saturday (8 p.m.) and Sunday (6 p.m.) at Kaseya Center.
The Heat originally was supposed to play the Bulls twice this week - Friday and Sunday in Miami - but ended up with three meetings in four days as a result of the rescheduling of their Jan. 8 game that was postponed due to condensation on the United Center floor.
After losing at home to the Magic on Wednesday, the Heat left South Florida at 12:45 a.m. Thursday morning and arrived at their hotel at 4:30 a.m. Eastern, 3:30 Chicago time.
The tweaking of the schedule “actually made sense,” Spoelstra said. “We looked at it. There were a couple of other different dates. This one looked like it made the most sense. And it’s fair for both sides. They’re coming off a back-to-back, so are we. So there’s nothing to complain about.
“This is a great life we live. To jump on a chartered flight with a great meal. Yeah, we came in pretty late. There’s a lot of worse things in life. We love what we do. We love the challenge. We love competing. Coming off a disappointing game, so we’d rather get after it tonight rather than stew on that game last night for too long.”
This marked the second time in a week that the Heat won on the second set of a back to back despite their flight arriving close to dawn on a game day. Miami overcame that exhausting itinerary to win in Phoenix last Sunday.
The Heat is now 8-3 on the second half of back-to-back sets.