1. With a real day off and a proper shootaround under his belt, Terry Rozier came out looking far more comfortable, scoring eight of the first 11 points including a four-point play out of the corner. Scorers like Rozier who rely on dribble creation will always run a little hot and cold, but the breakout was always going to come.
Miami as a whole, however, was still a little up and down coming into this one with a six-game losing streak. With neither team shooting particularly well, Phoenix held the early advantage in the paint thanks to backup center Drew Eubanks, finishing plays with Jusuf Nurkic in foul troube, pacing them to an eventual double-digit lead, and once they were up their scoring trio of Devin Booker, Bradley Beal and Kevin Durant all took turns holding Miami’s pushes – off Jimmy Butler (26 points on 12 shots) drives, a handful of threes and offensive boards – with off-the-bounce shotmaking. By halftime, Phoenix up 13, the Suns had nine makes in the restricted area to Miami’s six.
Another quick burst from Phoenix put them up 18 early in the third, Butler’s paint attacks and offensive rebounding along with Rozier’s shooting (21 points on 14 shots) again pulling Miami back within reason only for more mid-range making, this stretch coming from Booker, to push the lead back toward 20. The press-zone bought Miami a little bit of time but Phoenix adjusted well, limiting their turnovers and finding the open looks for their bevy of shooters. Suns by 26, a steady, gradual climb to that point, with the HEAT’s defense looking for traction.
A few Suns misses, Eric Gordon twice open in the corner with no reward, two threes from Josh Richardson and Tyler Herro and a pick-six steal from Richardson (just the fifth Suns turnovers of the night) gave Miami life, an 8-0 run to make the deficit 18. It was a comeback in earnest, a bit of a make-or-miss founded comeback with Phoenix attempting a string of corner threes as they worked the ball around the zone, and eventually Miami was within 13 with 4:41 to go against a Phoenix team that has had its share of fourth-quarter issues this season. They made it a game of it with a 31-18 final period but it wasn’t enough, Phoenix taking this one 108-105 as Miami dropped its seventh in a row.
2. While they wound up taking 40 threes due to all of Miami’s late-game zone – see below – the Suns are, even with all their deadly shooting, one of the highest volume mid-range teams in the league. All of Booker, Beal and Durant can get to their one or two dribble pull-ups with ease over the top of any coverage, and they often live and die on those shots.
Through the first three quarters, they did quite a bit of living. After the Eubanks-led paint points stacked up in the first period, the Suns’ lead guys started to get going, making 14-of-23 non-paint two pointers including 7-of-10 outside the paint. In the past – granted, before Beal and Durant – this was always an interesting matchup because the HEAT were primarily a switching team and switching had a way of disrupting all the pick-and-roll work Phoenix wanted to do. But with Miami playing primarily drop coverage this season, conceding a little space in the middle of the floor even as Bam Adebayo manages that space as well as anyone, Phoenix was able to get to what they do best against the HEAT’s base coverages, which may be why so much zone came into play later on. Booker, Beal and Durant combined for a modest 61 points on 59 shots as their percentages fell late, Miami otherwise doubling mismatches to keep any of them from finding a comfortable rhythm one-on-one, but they helped Phoenix build their lead in those middle periods.
3. This was one of the strangest fourth quarters of the season when it comes to the rhythm of the game. You had Miami in its press-zone for almost the entire period, a scheme designed to drain the shot clock of the other team and limit drives while they work the ball around the perimeter. Then you had Phoenix in its prevent offense, happy to beak the press and then slow things way down, not shooting until the final six seconds on the clock, working the ball around the arc until they inevitably found a corner three.
It was a gambit from Erik Spoelstra, playing the odds on outside jumpers, and it came relatively close to paying off. Phoenix shot 3-of-8 on corner threes – remember, they had Durant, Beal and Booker on the floor for most of this stretch – and 1-of-7 on above-the-break triples with just two attempts in the restricted area. It was a sink-or-swim shot profile, of course, if more of those shots fall the game is pretty much over but because threes are generally higher value but lower on the field-goal percentage scale, a cold stretch like this one allowed Miami to get back into the game on the strength of their own 5-of-8 shooting from three in the quarter. It was all a very stop-and-start affair, punctuated by Miami’s burst of shotmaking, and it panned out as far as the quarter went even if the deficit was too great at the start of it.