HEAT 106 - Warriors 111 Recap

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The Miami HEAT’s isolation-heavy, 22-turnover, 111-106 loss to the Golden State Warriors Tuesday night can remind you of a couple of things.

It can remind you of some of Miami’s late-game struggles last year, and of its oft-stagnant offense in the season’s opening months.

It can also remind you of just how deadly efficient the HEAT’s attack was in the opening week of this season, defeating the Dallas Mavericks and Boston Celtics with bodies flying up the court and through the cutting lanes.

Either, or both, the mind will find a way to make the events of this game conform to any number of trends, some more logical than others, but few offering much in the way of exactitude. That’s the way it works when a team gives up a 17-point lead with two minutes to go in the third quarter, with frustrated fans watching on the opposite coast as the clock ticks past midnight.

But from a strange game such as this, the sort where the ball looks as though it’s been greased, there are often more facts than truths to be offered.

It’s a fact that despite some excellent isolation defense against the likes of Monta Ellis, Miami got beat by ball rotations a few too many times, leading to eight threes – many playing a huge role in the comeback and overtime. It’s also a fact that the HEAT’s offense got sucked into the false hope provided by mediocre shots that fall, as early long jumpers – often with plenty of time left on the shot clock – that fell in the first half turned into early long jumpers that missed in the second half, giving Golden State extra time and possessions with which to mount their return.

It’s also a fact that in the many late-game situations after timeouts or dead balls, with clear plays in mind, the HEAT did not execute nearly to their capabilities, winding up too often with bailout shots, more of which missed than didn’t.

All facts, but none of them particularly true to Miami’s established identity, other than showing that the issues of this game are trappings the HEAT will occasionally fall into.

A truth, for example, would be if the HEAT’s offense completely fell off the cliff of efficiency late in the game. That would be more indicative of future efforts, and thus more worrisome. The efficient looks, however, were there when they needed to be. It was just the makes that weren’t.

“To score that many points and only have 16 assists, it was clearly a different game than the one we have been playing,” Erik Spoelstra said. “But that will change.”

So yes, Miami scored 12 points in the fourth quarter, but here were the shots missed:

That’s five shots missed at the rim, plus the HEAT’s five turnovers – one of them coming from Udonis Haslem as he was cutting to the rim and catching the ball – and a technical foul. Six very good looks in the paint, not to mention a few open jumpers, that just didn’t go down.

“We got some good looks,” LeBron James said. “They didn’t go through.”

The offense never appeared to be fully in sync down the stretch, but the results, after some self-correction in the middle of the quarter, were good even if the production wasn’t. Mix in some strange technical fouls and 14 missed free-throws over the course of the game – something that tends to figure itself out – and that’s all it takes for a team to comeback if it hits a few three and gets 20 second-chance points.

Yet the Warriors only shot 40 percent from the field, even worse in the fourth.

These are games that happen to every team during every regular season, to some more than others. The good teams, as Miami is, quickly readjust. That’s what makes them good. There are certainly things to adjust, too, it’s just always worth assessing which of those are the facts of the night, and which are the lingering truths. A few bounces go the other way in the fourth, a few shots fall at the rim, and the mind won’t attempt to label much as the latter.

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