{"id":944077,"date":"2026-10-24T04:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T04:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/944077\/"},"modified":"2026-10-24T04:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T04:22:09","slug":"heat-open-0-2-despite-antetokounmpos-strong-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/944077\/","title":{"rendered":"Heat open 0-2 despite Antetokounmpo’s strong start"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2014 Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a> has never had a better offensive start to a season. He’s also never had a worse overall start to a season.<\/p>\n

That’s how badly things are going on the defensive end for the Miami Heat<\/a> right now.<\/p>\n

Antetokounmpo scored 36 points on Friday night, giving him 71 through the first two games \u2014 matching the most he’s ever scored in the first two games of any season. That’s the good news.<\/p>\n

Here’s the bad news: Miami is 0-2, after giving up a franchise-worst 259 points in the first two games. It’s also the first time that Antetokounmpo has appeared in the first two games of a season and his team hasn’t gotten a win. (Milwaukee started 0-2 in 2015-16, the lone such start of his era there, but he appeared in only one of those two games.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted it to go well, not only for him, but for us,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “He really cares. He wants this to work. His teammates really want this to work. We\u2019re going to get there. It\u2019s just not on our timeline right now, not exactly how we wanted to start the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

No player in Heat history has gotten off to a faster two-game offensive start than Antetokounmpo; LeBron James scored 63 points in the first two games of the 2011-12 season, when Miami went on to win the NBA title.<\/p>\n

Antetokounmpo said he didn’t expect it to be easy, especially with two good teams \u2014 Minnesota and Detroit \u2014 as Miami’s first two opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes when things don\u2019t go your way you get discouraged, your defense is not as good,” Antetokounmpo said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, I feel like once we are locked in and we trust one another in all levels, offense becomes easier, defense becomes easier. And right now, it\u2019s not where it should be, but we\u2019ve got to keep on taking good things from the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antetokounmpo said sometimes teams need a shock \u2014 \u201cwe were definitely shocked,\u201d he said \u2014 and that can raise the level of urgency.<\/p>\n

And Spoelstra, as always, insists that the Heat won’t run from adversity. He said training camp and preseason were good starts to the team-building process, but that tough times like these are what truly bring a team together.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere we are,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cWe\u2019re getting to know each other right at the beginning of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Giannis Antetokounmpo has never had a better offensive start to a season. He’s also never had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-944077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=944077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}