The Heat lose to Sixers in 4th quarter (the 6th seed, their tiebreaker, ability to close in 4th.) The Heat were up by eight points early in the 4th quarter. Then, the Sixers outplayed the Heat. They made shots, they defended and made good plays. Kyle Lowry proved his value to the Sixers by being a Heat killer in the two games since he was traded. Coach Spolestra looks to have made a coaching mistake. Terry Rozier tried to be Dwayne Wade (put the team on his back) and held the ball too long. Let’s look at the recap.
Heat – Sixers 4th quarter point #3 — Terry Rozier Her(ro) ball.
Terry Rozier tried to be Dwayne Wade late in the game. He held the ball too long for several offensive possessions and took bad shots instead of getting the offense set. There was one possession where Rozier was trying so hard to shake his defender that Kyle Lowry had time enough to grab the ball and force a jump ball. As a fan, I was like, “Dude what are you doing?! Pass the ball!!” On another one, Rozier shot a 25′ 3 point shot, got his own rebound and then shot a fadeaway and missed. Again, the fan in me, “Helloooo! there are four other guys on the floor!”
Heat – Sixers 4th quarter point #2 — Too many three pointers.
The Heat were up 102-94 midway in the fourth quarter. A concerning habit the Heat offense has taken is to shoot a lot of threes instead of driving to the basket. Case in point, three out of the first four shots after they got this lead were three pointers. They were all misses. Looking at shot charts here on NBA.com, Adebayo took one shot in the fourth, Jaquez and Caleb Martin took mostly three pointers and so did Butler.
Heat post-game analyst Ron Rothstein has had a wonderful ability to “state basic points elequently.” He would do this as an assistant coach also in the early Spo years. He highlighted the 43 three point attempts and said, “if you’re gonna take that many threes, you should be making more than 13.” The Heat’s offense works better moving left to right with the ball moving and everyone involved.
Heat – Sixers 4th quarter point #1 — Sixers outplayed Heat.
Bam Adebayo said it in his post game press conference below that the Sixers got the Heat out of their half-court offense. He also said that the team was careless with the ball on some possessions. In this article here from Heat beat writer Ira Winderman, Butler and Adebayo did not meet the challenge from Embiid and Maxey.
Look at this article here on the game from Libertyballers.com. The Sixers really needed this game and they played up to the stakes. This article on our site here highlighted the three game losing streak they were on before the Heat game. From this article here on nbcsportsphiladelphia.com the Sixers played zone defense better than the Heat and let Maxey carry them to the win.
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