As the Miami Heat keeps losing, Jimmy Butler keeps winning.
As the Heat blew another double-digit fourth-quarter lead in a deflating 105-102 loss to the struggling Charlotte Hornets on Monday night at Kaseya Center to drop its fourth game in a row, Butler recorded a triple-double to lead the Golden State Warriors to a win over the Portland Trail Blazers for their fifth victory in a row.
Since the Heat traded the disgruntled Butler to the Warriors on Feb. 6, the Heat has gone 4-11 and the Warriors have posted a 12-1 record in games Butler has played in. In other words, the Heat has been bad and the Warriors have been excellent since the deal.
“Just a tough loss,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said following the Heat’s latest setback Monday, with the 0-3 five-game homestand continuing Wednesday against the Los Angeles Clippers (8 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun). “We got to find a way to get ourselves out of this hole. This isn’t fun for anybody. It’s a tough time right now. But we’re staying with it, we’ll figure it out. We really can’t blame anybody but ourselves and we just got to continue to stay in the fight. Can’t let go of the rope.”
It’s not just the fact that the Heat (29-35) keeps losing and now stands six games under the .500 mark for the first time since the 2020-21 season, but it’s how Miami is losing that has made it a traumatic experience to endure.
The Heat led the Hornets by as many as 17 points in Monday’s first half, pulled ahead by 11 with 6:47 left in the fourth quarter and still lost to the team with the NBA’s third-worst record.
After Monday’s collapse, the Heat has now wasted a fourth-quarter lead in eight of its last nine losses and in a total of 15 losses this season. Only the Minnesota Timberwolves entered Tuesday with more blown fourth-quarter leads (16 blown fourth-quarter leads) than the Heat this season.
The Heat has also blown a double-digit lead in 17 losses this season, which is the second-most such collapses in the NBA this season behind only the Utah Jazz (18 blown double-digit leads).
“We just have to forge ahead,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said late Monday night before the team went through practice at Kaseya Center Tuesday morning, continuing to take a hopeful and optimistic tone despite the rough patch that the team has hit. “You have to forge. Sometimes you get tested in a way that you don’t want to be tested in this league. And you can fold the tent or you just keep on forging and forging and forging. And that’s what our group is going to do.”
Most of the Heat’s late-game meltdowns have come since the Butler breakup turned ugly in early January. With Butler playing just five games for the Heat since the start of January amid serving three team-issued suspensions before eventually being traded to the Warriors last month, Miami has missed the player who was its top closer.
Not only is the Heat just 12-21 since Jan. 2, but it has also been outscored by an NBA-worst 15 points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter during this span. Thirteen of the Heat’s 17 blown double-digit leads and 12 of its 15 blown fourth-quarter leads have come during this stretch.
“We got to be mentally tough,” Herro said. “We’re all pros. I think we lost seven games in a row last year. Obviously, it’s a different situation. But we’re all hands on deck. We feel like things were trending in the right direction. Right now, it’s just two bad losses in a row at home that we feel we should have won the game. No one likes losing in this building and it doesn’t sit right with us.”
Unfortunately for the Heat, the schedule is about to get a lot tougher after losing two straight games to teams with sub.-.500 records in the Chicago Bulls on Saturday and Hornets on Monday.
Wednesday’s matchup against the Clippers marks the start of a stretch that includes six straight games against teams with winning records — vs. Clippers on Wednesday, vs. Boston Celtics on Friday, at Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday, at New York Knicks on March 17, vs. Detroit Pistons on March 19 and vs. Houston Rockets on March 21. The Heat is just 9-23 this season in games against teams currently with a winning record
“I do. Yes, I do. Of course, I do,” Spoelstra said when asked if he still believes the Heat’s current roster can compete with quality teams. “And our guys in the locker room feel the same way. We just have to stay together and use this as a growth opportunity to overcome something that sucks. We’re going to figure this out.”
But the Heat is running out of time to figure out its problems, with only 18 games left on its regular-season schedule.
The Heat is essentially locked into the NBA’s play-in tournament, which features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.
The Heat enters Tuesday in ninth place in the Eastern Conference — 6.5 games behind the sixth-place Detroit Pistons for the East’s final playoff spot that doesn’t require having to go through the play-in and seven games from completely dropping out of the play-in and playoff contention.
Meanwhile, the Warriors have moved from 10th place to sixth place in the Western Conference since Butler arrived.
“Some of these games, you just can’t even explain,” Spoelstra said of the Heat’s long list of blown leads in recent weeks. “We’ll get to work and try to fix the things that are obvious and there are things that are just happening. And there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of stress in our lives. We’ve got a lot of good things going for us to be able to be in this profession, be around each other.
“But there is a beauty in the grind, beauty in the struggle. If we just keep on forging ahead, I do believe that there’s something beautiful on the other side.”
As hopeless as it seems at the moment for the Heat, players and coaches still have hope. But one thing can’t be denied: Things haven’t gone as planned since the Butler breakup.
“We can’t just cough up this season,” Heat three-time All-Star Bam Adebayo said. “It’s next-game mentality and you never know. You win one and then you don’t know how long that streak will last. For us, it’s not letting go of the rope. We’ve went through too much this season to let go of the rope now.”
Miami Herald
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Anthony Chiang covers the Miami Heat for the Miami Herald. He attended the University of Florida and was born and raised in Miami.