Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra was searching for positives after Monday’s 132-98 blowout loss to the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 2. The team trails their first-round playoff series 2-0 as the scene shifts to South Beach.
It’s back to the drawing board for the defending Eastern Conference champions. And Spoelstra had very terse answers for what wrong in his post-game Zoom call. He wasn’t being mean-spirited or confrontational by any means. He was just at a loss for extended words after the second-worst playoff loss in Miami Heat history.
The 34-point deficit was right behind a 36-point defeat in the 2013 NBA Finals. The Heat watched the Bucks hit a playoff-record 22 three-pointers while out-rebounding Miami 61-36. They got punished hard on the offensive glass, 21-9.
“Yeah, that’s gotta change. Period,” Spoelstra said of the rebounding woes. “There’s a lot of different layers to it but the first part of it is a physical aspect when the ball goes up. Ball in the air, ball on the floor. We have to be much better.”
“That’s gotta change. Period.”
Coach Spoelstra says the Heat’s rebounding effort has to be different after the Heat were blown out by Milwaukee in Game 2
Jimmy Butler echoed Spoelstra’s concerns, saying the Heat had talked about recovering balls as soon as they go up in the air. Ditto for loose balls as soon as they hit the floor. They weren’t good enough in any area.
“We didn’t make anything difficult on them. We didn’t take anything away and the game got out of hand pretty early,” Butler said. “But we know what we have to do better. I think the bright spot is I don’t think you could play any worse.”
Butler and Miami’s other star player, Bam Adebayo, once again struggled in this one. Butler finished with 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting, while Adebayo went 5-of-11 for 16 points. Backup center Dewayne Dedmon scored a team-high 19 points for the Heat.
The latest Heat news straight to your inbox! Join the Heavy on Heat newsletter here!
Looking for Homecooking Back in Miami
Game 3 is slated for May 27 at 7:30 p.m. at AmericanAirlines Arena. Maybe they can feed off the energy from the home crowd after the team announced they were increasing fan capacity to 17,000 fans. Or maybe they just need to focus and compete better on the court.
“I don’t think so,” Butler said about getting a boost from Heat Nation. “We love playing in front of our home crowd, on our home floor but we still gotta go out there and play basketball the right way. Compete and do what we say we’re going to do before the game. Do what we way we’re going to do after the game. But, yeah, I guess it’ll feel a little bit better.”
Jimmy Butler: “The bright spot is I don’t think we could play any worse.”
Spoelstra challenged his two stars, Butler and Adebayo, to step it up. He put half the blame on them and the other half on himself. Either way, they need to perform at a much higher level.
“Probably both. I probably have to do some things to help them,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t know. This game just got out of hand quickly so it’s tough to say but you do have to respect what they [the Bucks] did tonight because it’s not as if they haven’t done this to teams at all.”
Tempers Flare in Third Quarter of Game 2
The outcome of Game 2 was never in doubt, especially after the Bucks raced out to a 46-20 first-quarter advantage. Milwaukee led by as many as 36 points at one point but that didn’t stop tempers from flaring all night.
It got really ugly in the third quarter when Trevor Ariza picked up a flagrant-one foul for a cheap shot on Giannis Antetokounmpo. Ariza dragged him down to prevent a lay-up, then appeared to do a push-up off his pelvic area. Kendrick Nunn (flagrant-one foul) and Goran Dragic (technical foul) also drew whistles in the second half.
The Heat has two days to calm the nerves and prepare for a must-win Game 3 in Miami. They’ll need to channel some of that aggression and use it to better clog the paint, box out, clean the glass. And guard the perimeter.
This foul by Ariza on Giannis 😬
Ariza gets hit with a flagrant
“I don’t think we need to give ourselves a pep talk,” Adebayo said. “We’re grown men. At the end of the day, we are down 2-0. We know what we’ve got to do.”
Added Butler: “I think we know what we have to do. Sometimes we get a little lost in trying to get everybody involved and that’s not a bad thing. I think that’s what’s made myself and him [Butler and Adebayo] really good players in this league but I think at times you gotta go, myself especially. We get it. We understand, man.”
READ ALSO:
Comments
‘Gotta Change. Period’: Tempers Flare in Bucks-Heat Playoff Series