Cade Cunningham

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Couper Moorhead

The Miami HEAT are 37-31, No. 8 in the Eastern Conference with a Net Rating of +0.5, No. 18 in the league. They finish up their road trip Wednesday in Cleveland before heading back home for four. With just a few weeks left in the regular season, here’s what we’ve been noting and noticing.

After Bam Adebayo hit a three in his second consecutive game on Friday in Detroit, Erik Spoelstra had this to say about the long gestating prospect of Adebayo incorporating more triples into his arsenal.

“I had this discussion with him during the summer when he was working on his corner three. I was cool with that, I want him to work on the three, but I told him the three that would be more available would be the one at the top. That’s where he ends up being more often. The spacing, it doesn’t really make sense for our roster for him to be in the corner.”

Sure enough, one game later with Miami finishing up a two-game series with Detroit, Adebayo caught the ball in the exact same spot as his previous two threes with the game on the line, made possible in part by Cade Cunningham making the curious decision to shoot a stepback three with nine seconds on the clock in a tie game. Adebayo hit the shot, of course, saving Miami from what would have been a very tough loss and handing NBA content creators the most dramatic moment of the day until Kyrie Irving hit a left-handed baby hook over Nikola Jokic from the free-throw line about an hour later.

Drama aside, the buzzer-beating game winner – No. 17 in HEAT franchise history and the second of Adebayo’s career after he hit a baseline jumper to sink the Brooklyn Nets back in 2021 – fit right into what Spoelstra was talking about. For many centers over the past decade it has made sense for them to begin stretching their games out to the corners. It’s a shorter shot and a natural progression for all those big men who once would have been pick-and-pop mid-range specialists. Even Chris Bosh spent a decent amount of time in the corners back in those days, albeit with some above-the-break game-winners to his own name, just to make space for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to get downhill.

Adebayo isn’t just a center on offense, though, he’s a hub. There’s rarely ever a reason for him to be in the corner, and thus away from the ball, because Miami runs just about everything through him – barring Jimmy Butler post-ups – in some form or fashion, be it in pick-and-rolls or handoffs or post-ups. Those things don’t happen in the corners. In the past three seasons, Adebayo hasn’t attempted a single corner three (he’s 12-of-79 on all attempts in his career, but there are quite a few heaves and last-second shots mixed in). In the way that Miami has tried to replicate Adebayo’s actions with their backup centers at times, players like Meyers Leonard and Dewayne Dedmon rarely shot out of the corners, either, most of their attempts coming as they trailed in from the top or in pick-and-pops. Even Kelly Olynyk and Kevin Love, by far the highest volume shooting big men Miami has had in the past five seasons, take fewer than 20 percent of their threes out of the corners. That’s just not where Spoelstra wants his centers, especially those with on-ball skills.

Of course as we say this Adebayo hit a corner three Monday night against Philadelphia – stretching his streak to five straight makes in all – but that was a in a semi-transition situation where the play naturally pushed Adebayo into the spot. Sure enough, two quarters later Paul Reed was still backing off Adebayo at the arc when Adebayo hit his second three.

It's natural to see Adebayo hit a three in five straight games for the first time in his career and think Miami’s offense is about to shift, but we’re a long, long way from that happening. Right now teams are giving Adebayo that shot because he doesn’t take them – though Sunday’s buzzer beater was more of a scramble situation with Adebayo’s defender moving to cut off Terry Rozier. That typically isn’t going to change until Adebayo starts taking those shots regularly, and it’s not going to change in a way that truly matters as far as the geography on the floor until Adebayo starts making them regularly. Not just one or two a week, one or two a game. And we really don’t have any sense of how good a shooter he can be from that range, though it is interesting that these threes have come at the same time as Adebayo has been in a bit of a funk from the free-throw line (61.7 percent since All-Star).

In other words, we’ll see. Adebayo taking threes has been a topic of conversation for years so there isn’t much left to say until it starts happening – a point we’ve just barely reached today. The occasional take or make is fun and makes for good conversation. At the right time they can outright hand Miami a win. But the path to truly changing how defenses treat you is a long one, and there are growing pains along that road.

If the threes continue to come, though, they’re clearly going to come from the top. That’s the only way for Adebayo to find those shots without Miami completely changing how he functions within an offense that largely functions based on how and where he moves.

There isn’t much anyone can do with Nikola Jokic other than make him work harder for his shots than the next guy, but Adebayo has proven himself to be among those who make him work the hardest. In two games against Miami this regular season Jokic has 30 combined points on 11-of-23 shooting to go with 13 combined assists. Fine numbers, if a little short of what the two-time MVP can put up in his sleep, and Denver won both of those games relatively comfortably down the stretch, but it wasn’t as if Jokic was walking into his spots and taking easy shots. Instead, many of Denver’s possessions looked like this, at least when they were trying to get Jokic the ball inside the arc.

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Notebook 73: Bam Fronting Jokic

“There’s no one better in the league who can negotiate this,” Spoelstra said after the game. “First of all nobody will go toe-to-toe, minute-for-minute against Jokic other than Bam. Bam signs up for that and he’ll put himself out there and be vulnerable to the competition. That’s the competitor of all competitors. That just sets the tone, but it is difficult. You have to negotiate so many different things. At the top of the floor, in the post – they started to post him up a little more then once you’re comfortable with that they go to the two-man action, then you have to do pick-and-roll basketball, then the ball goes back to him and you have to play him off the dribble and try to disrupt passing angles and all that. But that’s why Bam is Bam.

“That’s why I always say, year after year, he should be in consideration for Defensive Player of the Year. Because he can do things and will put himself out there to do things that the majority of the league won’t because it’s easier to not do it. Sometimes you’re going to get beat because Jokic is a great player, sometimes you’re going to get scored on or fouled or you play your pick-and-roll defense, the ball goes back to him and he scores because somebody else didn’t do their job. There’s a lot of things that go into it. They’re a complex team.”

We don’t need to oversell Adebayo’s defense on Jokic considering how well Denver has played Miami over the past few years. The results are the results. But watch that clip again and see how much size he’s giving up, using his speed to his advantage by fighting back in front for position midway through a possession. You aren’t going to find anyone who stops Jokic, but you’re also not going to find many players who make him work like Adebayo, who spent much of that game blowing up Denver’s bread-and-butter actions between Jokic and Jamal Murray in drop coverage until Reggie Jackson hit a couple jumpers in the drop cushion in the fourth quarter.

Even more Adebayo because why not? He’s Miami’s constant, holding the team together one both sides of the floor through all the various injuries that continue to plague the team.

Against Philadelphia on Monday, Adebayo had 20 points and six assists on 8-of-10 shooting through three quarters. Then, in the fourth quarter of what eventually became a clutch game, he took zero shots as Miami lost by seven. What happened?

First things first, with Miami’s full court pressing bench unit, including Thomas Bryant, storming back against the Sixers’ bench, Adebayo didn’t come into the game until just under the six minute mark after he had been waiting at the table. We’re talking about less than half a quarter. His first possession back on the floor he’s immediately in pick-and-roll with Rozier, eventually getting the ball back at the top of the arc before he swung it to Caleb Martin for a spot-up look.

Second possession, another screen for Rozier that Rozier took in for a layup. Third possession, another pick-and-roll with Rozier with Adebayo getting help up by Buddy Hield with the low man, Tyrese Maxey, sinking into the paint. After a Jaquez Jr. post-up, more Adebayo screens, Maxey continuing to pull into the paint to chuck Adebayo off his roll.

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Notebook 73: Maxey Low Man Bam

Later Adebayo gets a catch at the elbow in an offensive rebound situation, but two players sink in and he kicks it to Martin for an eventual and-one drive. There was an opportunity for a post-up with just over a minute to play, but Nic Batum fronted the pass with a short clock and Rozier was forced into a three. From there on, mostly scramble situations as the HEAT trailed in the final minute.

Adebayo was involved in just about every possession, either setting a screen or getting a playmaking touch, with his usual zone mostly taken away by Philadelphia clogging the lane with third and fourth defenders. You might ask why not try to get Adebayo some early post touches, which is a question that the Sixers had answered earlier in the game when they clearly showed their intention to double Adebayo’s post touches.

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Notebook 73: Bam Post Doubled

Drawing two in the post is often a good situation for Miami, but they were generating solid offense out of pick-and-roll without having to worry about killing their own shot clock trying to setup post touches.

Big picture, this is a story that just about every big man in the league has dealt with, including Joel Embiid. As players who generally don’t bring the ball up and attack from 30 feet out, they’re reliant on other players getting them the ball in their spots. Defenses, then, can sell out on taking away those spots to deny said big man their touches outright, and so many, many, many centers who had previously been rolling have struggled to find shots down the stretch of close games. Sure, you can force the issue, which can possibly lead to tough shots as the defense collapses on your dribble anyway, but such is life for the modern center. A defense focused on taking away their touches isn’t all too different from a defense focused on taking away a guard with doubles and blitzes on screens – the difference is the guard starts the possession with the ball while a center might not touch it at all.

We don’t need to harp on Cunningham’s decision to shoot with nine seconds on the clock on Sunday anymore, but there is one small aspect of that play worth drawing attention to. Cunningham told Omari Sankofa II of the Detroit Free Press that he “read that they were about to double” which is part of why he decided to shoot early, not wanting to be forced into giving the ball up. Still not a reason to give Miami time to go the other way, but it’s an explanation.

Was Miami going to double? Watch Caleb Martin on the play.

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Notebook 73: Caleb Stunting Cade

The way the floor is setup there, it’s a little hard to believe that Martin was going to double out of the strong side corner and leave Evan Fournier wide open. But Martin’s activity, with that quick little stunt, clearly caught Cunningham’s attention. Whether or not Spoelstra had told anyone to double – this possession came off a steal, so there was no timeout for special instructions – we’ll probably never know. What’s important is that Martin made Cunningham think the double was coming, and that small movement was enough to afford the HEAT enough time for a game winner on the other end.

Just another small, winning play to write on Martin’s ledger , which is already full of them.

The players with the most interesting roles on the HEAT roster right now are Nikola Jovic and Haywood Highsmith. Jovic we’ve discussed recently. He either starts or he doesn’t play at all, and it remains to be seen whether his current starting spot – before the injury that’s had him out the past two games – will endure into the postseason.

Highsmith, on the other hand, has been all over the place. Some of that is due to a series of injuries earlier in the season, before which he had started 14 consecutive games in which he was available. He also started seven straight in across January and February, but since then he’s played over 20 minutes six times, between 10 and 19 minutes three times and fewer than 10 minutes six times (while appearing in the game). The only game he didn’t see the court – remember, just about every HEAT game has been close so his minutes haven’t been a function of garbage time in the fourth quarter – was against Denver on the road, which in itself was interesting given Spoelstra used him in spot minutes against Jamal Murray last season in the Finals. Highsmith then played seven minutes against Denver in Miami.

Injuries to the rest of the roster are always a factor, which is why the games where he played four, five or six minutes are so interesting right now. In a sense, he’s in the rotation without being a rotation player – a specialist role where nearly every game requires his specialty at a different time or quarter. And when he is on the court, Spoelstra typically has him exclusively on the other team’s best or second-best scorer, with Highsmith seeing minutes against Murray, Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as a primary defender.

“I’m just staying ready,” Highsmith says. “Sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to play but it is what it is, just have to stay ready for when my number is called. Every time he looks down the bench I’m ready in case he says my name.”

Highsmith’s skillset – shooting 36 percent from three while being the only player on the roster outside of Adebayo at +1.0 or better in Defensive Estimated Plus/Minus – is mostly a known commodity, which is partially what allows Spoelstra to deploy him in so many different situations. Not every player could handle such varied and sporadic minutes, but that’s essentially been Highsmith’s journey to this point. His game fits the postseason style of basketball and his defensive versatility allows Miami to switch more than it has been during the regular season, so it’s very possible his minutes increase down the road.

For now, playing regularly is playing regularly, and that’s no small thing for a player who has beaten overwhelming odds to get to where he is.

One item we had on our early season checklist after the HEAT’s historic shooting during their Finals run and their subsequent offseason roster changes was three-point volume. Miami typically had an above-average or higher shot frequency from behind the arc during the Jimmy Butler era, especially given how few threes Butler generally takes, but they came into this campaign without many players who had taken threes at high volume in their careers.

Miami is down at No. 17 in three-point frequency this season, 35.1 percent of their field-goal attempts coming behind the arc after 37.5 percent last year and 38.6 percent the year before, and it’s not a result of the league passing them by as league volume has mostly remained static for the past four seasons. They’re simply taking fewer three-point shots than they have since Butler arrived in 2019.

Is this a good or bad thing? In a vacuum, it’s neither. The Celtics lead the league in three-point rate (43.7 percent) and they have the league’s best offense – their high variance game can also give them issues in small sample playoff series – but No. 30 is Denver which may be the most sustainable offense for the postseason and in the middle of those two is the No. 2 offense, Indiana, with the No. 15 three-point rate. Offensive success is not uniform. That said, Miami is No. 21 in Offensive Rating, they lead the league in upper paint shots – at a solid 46.9 percent – and are No. 29 in rim frequency. They’ve always been near the bottom of the league in rim rate so that isn’t anything new, now they’ve traded a few threes per game for mid-range looks.

The complicated part of this is that those mid-range looks are necessary in the postseason when the best defenses scheme away all those high-value opportunities you’ve spent the year feasting on. You’re going to need Adebayo dotted line jumpers. You’re going to need Terry Rozier and Tyler Herro pull-ups and Jimmy Butler fadeaways. No team plays into June without players who can hit those shots. Miami diversifying their offensive menu to the point where they can generally set up those looks when necessary has been a big part of their last two postseason runs.

The question is more whether, or how, Miami can scale up their volume when it is necessary, especially against all the various Eastern Conference teams that play a ton of drop coverage. Rozier will help there, as will a healthy Herro when he gets right, but as of today Miami has five games with 40-plus three-point attempts after 14 all of last season and 28 the year before when Adebayo missed a month. Against Denver last week they attempted just 21 threes, tying their season low, forcing them into a value opportunity game against one of the best two-point teams in the league. As much as you need those mid-range shots, they can’t be your only source of offensive nutrition.

Answers are only going to come in the postseason, but for now this is one of the most important trends in Miami’s offense even if, on paper, it only looks like the difference of a few percentage points.

-Miami’s 32 unique starting lineups this season are a franchise record.

-The HEAT are averaging 17.5 possessions per game that goes into the last five seconds of the shot clock, third-most in the league behind New York and Orlando. Last season they were also No. 3 with 18.6 late-clock possessions per game. Miami’s efficiency on those possessions has been around 104 points per 100 in each season.

-After missing out on clutch qualifications in a handful of December and January games – leads or deficits lingering between six and nine while never dropping below five under five minutes in the fourth – Miami is now tied for the fourth-most clutch games in the league at 37, three behind the Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors. They are 19-18 in those games (32-22 last season) with a Net Rating of -17.4 (they were +14.7 last year).

-Removing assist opportunities to focus more on individual defense, Adebayo is currently No. 3 of the 63 players who have defended at least 100 isolations, per Second Spectrum tracking data, in allowing 0.78 points per. And of the 30 players who have defended at least 1,000 pick-and-rolls he’s No. 4, allowing 0.96 points-per. Rudy Gobert, at No. 1, allows 0.93. More on Adebayo’s defense coming soon.

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Coup's Notebook Vol. 73: Bam Adebayo Goes Deep, Bam Adebayo Signs Up And Bam Adebayo Gets Doubled Plus Haywood Highsmith’s On And Off Role, Caleb Martin’s Mind Games And Sound Checking Miami’s Threes

1. We’ve seen a lot of Detroit lately and all these games have generally followed a similar pattern, Miami getting ahead early, the Pistons scrapping together enough points to stay attached and take a few leads until Miami’s experience and talent eventually putting things away down the stretch.

Much of the same on this Sunday afternoon with injury absences for Jimmy Butler and Nikola Jovic handing the HEAT their 32nd starting lineup of the season, a franchise record. Neither side had much of anything going offensively at the start, which can be typical of these matinee games, but Detroit fought back from a very early hole to take one lead after another, eventually stretching their advantage out to seven after a quick burst from Jaden Ivey and pull-up three from Marcus Sasser.

Duncan Robinson had a little to say about things at that point, consecutive threes earning Miami the lead as Detroit struggled to keep pace with him wherever he was on the floor. By the time Terry Rozier got in on the action, Erik Spoelstra offering a helping hand of zone, with some semi-transition floaters and a stepback three, the HEAT were back up double digits against a Detroit side struggling at 6-of-17 in the upper paint.

Not many competitive exchanges for much of the third quarter even though the HEAT never quite pushed the lead past 20 to really put things out of reach. Detroit just didn’t have anything that was consistently giving Miami any trouble, random jumpers keeping them attached but very little creating downhill momentum. That all flipped in the final minutes after a Simone Fontecchio driving and-one led to a sequence featuring multiple Miami misses at the rim all followed by advantage scores for Detroit, a 16-2 Pistons run out of nowhere to close the gap to three. Once again, the Pistons weren’t ready to go away.

Detroit’s bench again struggled to score early in the fourth as they did last Friday, the lead back to nine within three minutes, but again they fought back by stringing stops together, this time Evan Fournier coming to life with the ball in his hands and closing within two – and all tied up minutes later. Robinson then bailed out a late-clock possession with a contested three and followed it up with a driving assist to Jaime Jaquez Jr. to offer Miami a little stability. Cade Cunningham still made it a one-point game with two to go after that, but Robinson hit right back again, this time with a four-point play. Bam Adebayo had a putback with 51 seconds left that might’ve sealed the win, but it was wiped away as a shot-clock violation on review, the HEAT again up just two.

Cunningham tied it up on a drive and had the opportunity to go ahead with the shot clock turned off, but Cunningham not only missed he took it with a full nine seconds remaining, all that time allowing Rozier to push full court and kick it to Adebayo for a deep, buzzer-beating, game-winning three from the top of the arc. Miami takes it, 104-101, to sweep the two-game series in Detroit.

2. The play, or maybe the decision, of the game might have been Cunningham’s to shoot with a full nine seconds remaining, but the shot of the game was most definitely the resulting play as Adebayo’s 30-footer was pure from the moment it left his hands – with Adebayo holding the follow through the entire way.

Not only was this Adebayo’s third consecutive game with a triple – all pretty much from the same spot as teams give him the shot, with Duren dropping back to cut off Rozier on the final play tonight, as the HEAT aren’t exactly going to have Adebayo trying to space out from the corners – but just the 12th three of his career on 79 attempts (most of which have been late-clock attempts). Adebayo now has two buzzer-beating game winners on his ledger, the first of which was a baseline jumper against Brooklyn back in 2021, and today’s was the 17th such shot in Miami franchise history, with Jimmy Butler also hitting one earlier this season. Adebayo finished with 20 points on 13 shots to go with 17 rebounds, but all anyone is going to remember are his picture-perfect heroics in the final seconds. His push for a spot on an All-NBA team continues.

3. There are guys who help you win games and there are guys who win you games outright. Most of the time, Duncan Robinson is the former, a role player whose shooting and gravity changes everything Miami does on the offensive side of the ball. But then there are nights when Robinson is so hot from three, when teams get so freaked out by his shooting that they get entirely discombobulated and it means the entire difference between winning and losing. That was the case tonight as Robinson’s 7-of-12 shooting from three was the key to the car, Detroit eventually overreacting to that shooting to such a degree that Robinson eventually sprung free for drives, assists and cuts as defenders overplayed his typical actions to prevent his touches.

Adebayo might be the hero tonight – Robinson admitting during a postgame interview that Adebayo’s three saved him after a late turnover – but Robinson, with 30 points on 10-of-15 shooting, was the reason Miami was in front for most of the time and the reason Detroit was playing from behind in those closing minutes. We’ve seen it all before, Robinson becoming the fastest player to 1,000 three after being the fastest player to most round numbers before that, and there’s no reason to believe that we won’t see it all again.

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Coup's Takeaways: Bam Adebayo Saves The Day With Deep Buzzer-Beating Three

1. You play the Pistons and you think you’re going to have to find ways to deal with a talent like Cade Cunningham, but tonight Miami found themselves trying to deal with Simone Fontecchio through the early stages of Friday night.

They haven’t been much of a story of late after being eliminated from postseason contention, but Detroit has been playing hard and winning a few games lately so it was no surprise that they kept this close. Miami’s previous two wins over them were only by a combined nine points after all. And so there was Fontecchio in the early going, hitting threes, getting into the paint and pulling Detroit back in front every time they fell behind. But each time the Pistons jumped ahead by a possession they seemed to cough up a turnover immediately after, Miami sustaining an 18-plus steal – which would be a season high – pace for all of the first half, eating up the easy scores that came with each mistake. But even though the efficiency wasn’t there for either Jaden Ivey or Cunningham, the ball movement was, producing enough for Jalen Duren and Detroit’s shooters to stay attached. Miami’s 3-of-16 from three was doing a lot of work, sure, but Detroit wasn’t much better at 5-of-19. The difference, insofar as a two-point lead at the break is a difference, was Bam Adebayo’s 16 points in the second quarter as he mauled the interior – with another three on top, his second consecutive game with a three – against a big Detroit frontline.

More Detroit turnovers to open the third and it took Miami only two minutes to stretch the lead to eight. More misses from three for Miami, too, as Detroit again pulled back within three, but it didn’t take long for the lead to reach nine thanks to a burst from Terry Rozier, getting past Cunningham (11 points on 5-of-15 shooting) twice to get to the rim. Then Duncan Robinson came alive after a cold night to that point, hitting back-to-back threes to push Miami up 15, followed by another after a timeout to make it 18, a 12-0 run in all. Down to 12 at the end of three, but this was as much as Miami has been in control of the Pistons this season.

Not much of a threat coming from Detroit after that, the Pistons unable to keep with even a modest offensive effort from Miami as Fontecchio cooled. Caleb Martin kept himself involved in all his usual, five-tools-player ways to lock this one up and Miami finished with a 108-95 victory with another one in Detroit on deck for Sunday.

2. Bam Adebayo had been in a bit of a mini-slump during Miami’s four-game losing streak, much of it with his stroke on those short jumpers and from the free-throw line running cold, but his lively effort in an otherwise tough offensive game for the HEAT against Denver seems to have him back on track. He didn’t score at all in the first quarter of this one but took in the third quarter in what proved to be a stretch that kept the HEAT from falling into a hole. Hot or cold Adebayo’s game doesn’t change too much so it’s not like we saw much different tonight beyond what we’ve grown to expect – the three was the exception, with Adebayo taking the wide open shots opposing teams are giving him – on his way to 22 points on 10-of-14 shooting in three quarters of play with the lead sufficient enough to allow him some fourth-quarter rest.

It's that time of year when awards discussions and narratives get revved up and Adebayo should be firmly in the discussion not only for Defensive Player of the Year – he’s held Miami’s defense together through all their various injuries and lineups while largely playing a coverage, the drop, that would have been considered the antithesis of his strengths, switching, a couple years ago – but for an All-NBA spot. Whether he gets there or not remains to be seen, but the season he’s putting forward might give him the best chance he’s had at both honors.

3. Even with Miami shooting just 7-of-34 from three – they did get the benefit of two three-shot fouls – there are two things you can’t do at the same time and expect to beat the HEAT doing. That’s shooting poorly from three at high volume and turning the ball over, especially in live-ball situations, also at high volume. That was the story of Detroit’s night, even when they were taking those one-, two- or three-point leads in the first half, and they finished 10-of-38 from three, including 4-of-20 from the trio of Ivey, Evan Fournier and Marcus Sasser.

Then there were the turnovers, with Miami tying its season high of 14 steals with plenty of time left in the fourth quarter. The HEAT don’t rely on the feedback loop of turning stops, and steals, into points the same way they did a couple of seasons ago when they had a Top 5 defense, but there remains nothing that keeps their offense above water like being able to feast off steals and the resulting transition opportunities. You expect two-steal nights from the likes of Jimmy Butler (14 points on 11 shots), Adebayo and Martin, but credit Robinson (three steals) for being active in the passing lanes, making a number of nice reads that allowed him to pre-rotate and deflect passes. Surprisingly, NBA teams are only 31-15 this season when collecting 14-plus steals, but seven of those losses came with the same team shooting less than 30 percent from three, making Miami the sixth team to hit both marks in a win.

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Coup's Takeaways: Bam Adebayo Dominates Second Quarter, HEAT Pull Away In Third In First Of Two In Detroit

1. The Detroit Pistons may have set the single season record for losses in a row this season but those with good memories will recall that Miami only beat them by one point on opening night. There’s talent on this roster, enough to give a good team trouble.

The way that trouble happened in the first half was a little backwards, the story of two teams struggling in opposite areas. Detroit couldn’t make a three in the first half, going 4-of-16, but behind Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey’s drives they pushed their pick-and-rolls into attackable closeouts situations for everyone else, scoring 28 in the paint on 14-of-24 shooting. Miami, meanwhile, was getting much of whatever they wanted, inducing multiple Pistons players to jump on pump fakes – Detroit is then No. 27 ranked defense for a reason – but sometimes you get the shots you want and they still don’t fall. Miami was just 7-of-20 in the upper paint at the break, balanced out by 7-of-11 shooting from three, 5-of-7 between Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin. The end result? Miami leading by just one point through two quarters, scoring 36 in the first while surrendering 34 in the second.

Detroit jumped out to a quick four-point lead in the third but that was remedied in a hurry by a 12-0 HEAT run, the threes still falling, Detroit turning into over and those upper paint looks beginning to convert into points. Just as it was last October, though, Detroit wasn’t going anywhere even with Miami up to 11-of-17 from deep, closing back within two points behind Cunningham (23 points on 8-of-20 shooting) and threes (including one right as Miami dipped back into some zone). With Terry Rozier getting hot Miami always had the shots to answer, taking advantage of all those youthful mistakes on Detroit’s side, but there’s nothing commanding about a five-point lead going into the fourth. Detroit had their chance, once again.

Miami had Jimmy Butler, though, starting the fourth quarter again – Detroit was happy to leave Evan Fournier on an island with him – and even as the HEAT cooled the Pistons were only able to muster enough threes to stay close, not put them over the top. It was close, though, a clutch game through and through, Miami up one with 2:40 to go until Rozier got to the rim and Duncan Robinson capitalized on an Ivey live-ball turnover with a transition three. That was that, Butler hitting the punctuation mark with a pull-up three as Miami takes it 118-110.

2. Erik Spoelstra has dialed up quite a bit of press-zone in fourth quarters against young, inexperienced teams or teams struggling to shoot over the past few weeks. The Pistons met both of those qualifications tonight, and sure enough there was Miami in their finishing coverage midway through the fourth. Detroit found a few scores against it, though, and the thing about the zone is that Miami usually wants to run it after a made shot but with their own shots not falling, the opportunities weren’t there.

After Detroit scored a handful against the zone, even with Ivey missing two wide open threes, Spoelstra instead got out of it and went back to how they closed games years ago – with switching. No longer was Bam Adebayo backing off in drop coverage, conceding space off the screens as has been the HEAT’s base look all season, instead he was jumping out on Cade Cunningham, either taking the switch or Miami outright putting two on the ball to get it out of Cunningham’s hands. Detroit had their shots out of that look, with Cunningham taking the pressure well and not forcing things against Adebayo unless the shot clock deemed it necessary, but missed threes spelled their doom as Miami found some rhythm down the stretch. Miami can win games defensively in all kinds of ways, but sometimes it’s just nice to see them go back to what they used to do better, and more often, than anyone else.

3. There’s a lot of talk about how Butler plays differently, more aggressively, after the All-Star break, and there may be no better example than the shot he took with 22 seconds left, a pull-up three on the right wing. Miami was up five at that point, a three not necessary at all, and it was the type of shot Butler would only take when trailing in the final seconds in the early months of the season, but tonight he went for the kill as he’s done so often in the postseason. That, right there, is the difference from March on.

The rest of the game was typical Butler, wrecking every mismatch thrown his way and making the right pass when help did come – though Detroit opted out of that help in curious fashion a few times. Scoring 26 points on 7-of-13 shooting hardly even registers on the Butler scale these days, but the way Detroit was often helpless when he fully engaged his defender is a feeling quite a few teams in the past few weeks can have quite a bit of empathy for.

Cade Cunningham

Coup's Notebook Vol. 73: Bam Adebayo Goes Deep, Bam Adebayo Signs Up And Bam Adebayo Gets Doubled Plus Haywood Highsmith’s On And Off Role, Caleb Martin’s Mind Games And Sound Checking Miami’s Threes

Coup's Takeaways: Bam Adebayo Saves The Day With Deep Buzzer-Beating Three

Coup's Takeaways: Bam Adebayo Dominates Second Quarter, HEAT Pull Away In Third In First Of Two In Detroit

Coup's Takeaways: Jimmy Butler Steadies The Ship As Detroit Hangs Around For Another Clutch Game