The streaking Miami Heat remains short-handed.
After winning its sixth straight game in a 124-103 statement victory over the Boston Celtics at TD Garden on Wednesday night, the Heat remains without Andrew Wiggins (right hamstring tendinopathy), Kevin Love (personal reasons), Nikola Jovic (broken right hand) and Dru Smith (left Achilles surgery) for Thursday’s matchup against the Memphis Grizzlies at Kaseya Center (7:30 p.m., TNT) on the second night of a back-to-back set.
The Heat will also be without Terry Rozier because of a stomach illness. Rozier has fallen out of Miami’s rotation in recent weeks and received his seventh DNP-CD (did not play, coach’s decision) in the last 11 games during Wednesday’s win in Boston.
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But the good news for the Heat is it’s getting three-point shooting forward Duncan Robinson back after he missed the last five games with a back issue that was labeled by the team as “left sacroiliac joint dysfunction.” Robinson is available to make his return Thursday.
Haywood Highsmith (left Achilles soreness) is listed as questionable after logging 26 minutes off the bench in the Heat’s win over the Celtics. Highsmith will warm up to determine if he can play Thursday.
The rest of the Heat’s roster is expected to be available against the Grizzlies.
But there remains uncertainty surrounding Wiggins’ health, as he’ll miss his 12th game because of injury or illness on Thursday since being traded to the Heat on Feb. 6 as part of the Jimmy Butler trade. Wiggins missed one game due to a stomach illness, five games due to a sprained right ankle, two games due to a left lower leg contusion and will miss his fourth straight game on Thursday due to a hamstring issue.
When Wiggins has been available, he has been one of the Heat’s best players. He has averaged 19.9 points, 4.1 rebounds, 3.2 assists and 1.1 steals per game in his first 15 appearances (all starts) with the Heat since the trade.
The only players on the Grizzlies’ injury report for Thursday’s game are Brandon Clarke (right knee PCL sprain), Zyon Pullin (right patellar tendon surgery recovery) and Vince Williams Jr. (illness), who have all been ruled out for the contest.
The rest of the Grizzlies’ roster is expected to be available against the Heat.
THIS AND THAT
▪ The Heat’s leading duo of Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro was good in Wednesday’s road win over the Celtics, but Miami’s supporting cast was also impressive.
While Adebayo (21 points) and Herro (25 points) combined for 46 points in Boston, the quartet of Pelle Larsson (16 points), Kyle Anderson (19 points), Davion Mitchell (13 points) and Highsmith (10 points) combined for 58 points for the Heat.
“We depend on everybody,” Adebayo said. “It’s not just me and Tyler out there hooping. It’s all of us. Guys check in, we believe in them to go out there. If we’re up 10, we want them to push it to 15. When they check in, we want them to come in locked in and ready to go.”
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra praised Larsson after Wednesday’s win, saying he “just does a lot of winning things.”
Spoelstra labeled Anderson “a winning basketball player.”
Spoelstra said Mitchell “is really embracing his role of being a pit bull, an energy changer off the bench.”
▪ The Heat enters Thursday with a poor 10-26 record this season in games against teams that currently have a winning record. But Wednesday’s win over the defending NBA champion Celtics offered some hope that the new-look Heat can compete with the league’s best teams.
“There’s not a team where we’re like, ’We’re scared of them, we don’t want to play them,’” Anderson said. “I think we can compete with anybody. We’ve shown that. And the most important time of the year is coming up in two weeks, so we’ll see.”
▪ The Heat is just the third team in NBA history to immediately follow a losing streak of at least 10 games with a winning streak of at least six games. The other two teams that did it are the 2021-22 Houston Rockets (didn’t make the playoffs and finished with a 20-62 record) and the 2017-18 Chicago Bulls (didn’t make the playoffs and finished with a 27-55 record).
The Heat is also the first team in NBA history to immediately follow a losing skid of at least 10 games with six straight double-digit wins. The Heat’s average margin of victory during its six-game winning streak is a dominant 20.5 points per game.
“It looked on the outside that everybody thought that we would be dead and going our separate ways,” Spoelstra said. “But we felt alive by the challenge and the frustration of that. And then what you hope is that you develop a sense of connection and we developed that during the losing streak — ironically enough.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 2:01 PM.