As the Heat lost to the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night, 98-86, it featured one of the most frustrating offensive efforts of the season from the team. With the Heat struggling to sustain leads as of recently, that wasn’t the case in Atlanta as they were unable to buy a bucket as Erik Spoelstra does find the positive in what is a frustrating defeat.
Sometimes, the reason for losing is just that one team missed shots and one could argue that was the case for Miami against the Hawks as they shot 32.1 percent from the field and only made seven three-point shots out of 40 attempts (17.5 percent). Head coach Erik Spoelstra said after the game that the game would look “totally different” if they made those “open shots,” but still loved how they “competed” according to The Miami Herald.
“Those were the open shots,” Spoelstra said. “We make a handful more of those, it looks totally different.”
“Our guys really competed tonight, laid it all out there defensively,” Spoelstra said. “It wasn’t easy, but we were scrambling. They just put up 150 last night, holding them basically to under 100. But you do have to score. There’s a reality to that.”
While some may see it as an excuse, there is some truth to what Spoelstra said as per Wes Goldberg citing NBA tracking data, “the Heat shot 5 for 35 on ‘open’ or ‘wide open’ 3-point attempts.”
Erik Spoelstra speaks on the dreadful offensive night for the Heat
The Heat’s newcomer Andrew Wiggins was the only player on the team to make more than one shot from beyond the arc and even the only one in the starting lineup to make at least one. Spoelstra would say it “looked like we had a lid on the rim” regarding the shooting struggles experienced Monday night.
“It just looked like we had a lid on the rim,” Spoelstra said. “We could not knock down some of the open ones, even the guys that are our better shooters on the team. But you just have to stay with it. We’re closer than what it feels, and that’s the hard part.”
“I thought this had a chance to be just a really gratifying win,” Spoelstra continued. “Just in the mud, ugly to be able to prove that you can win a game on the road without making shots at your normal level. But we weren’t able to do it.”
Heat’s Tyler Herro, Andrew Wiggins on their perspective of the loss
As the Heat have many flaws to take care of, it didn’t help that the group was playing in the second game of a back-to-back where the night prior, they were in Milwaukee. This was said by the team’s lone All-Star Tyler Herro, who scored 11 points, that it was “not going to be perfect,” and still admired how they kept the Hawks under 100 points after scoring 143 in their loss to the Detroit Pistons last Sunday.
“The second night of a back-to-back, it’s not going to be perfect,” Herro said. “Both teams couldn’t make shots really. It was low-scoring through the third, and halfway through the fourth. I thought once we started doubling Trae Young, we played right into their hands, got us in rotation, got whatever they wanted and then we were fighting on the other end to create good looks.”
If there is one goal for the team, it’s to have “short-term memory” as Wiggins said to the media after the game after leading the team with 23 points.
“In the NBA, you got to have a short-term memory,” Wiggins said. “On to the next game and we believe in ourselves, the coaches believe in us and we know what we can do.”
At any rate, Miami is 26-30 which puts them ninth in the Eastern Conference as the team comes back home for a rematch against Atlanta on Wednesday.
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