by injuries elsewhere<\/a>, Nikola Jovic played himself out of the rotation.<\/p>\n\u2013 Hardly an answer to the power mix.<\/p>\n
\u2013 This doesn\u2019t mean it doesn\u2019t work with Adebayo.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And it doesn\u2019t mean it doesn\u2019t work with Ware.<\/p>\n
\u2013 But it hasn\u2019t been working with the two in tandem.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Not that Spoelstra has many other options in his power rotation (with all due respect to undersized Keshad Johnson).<\/p>\n
\u2013 In less than a week, the Heat will have the option of adding another player to the standard roster while still remaining below the luxury tax.<\/p>\n
\u2013 The fact that the power rotation still needs to be addressed makes it all the more confounding that it wasn\u2019t addressed already.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And in this case, with even Jovic inserted in the second half before Ware.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Big things clearly at play.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Big things clearly needing to be addressed.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Tyler Herro, Davion Mitchell and Pelle Larsson out, the Heat opened with a lineup of Ware, Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins, Norman Powell and Dru Smith.<\/p>\n
\u2013It was the Heat\u2019s 10th lineup in their 24 games.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And the third career start for Smith, who started one game for the Heat in 2022-23 and one last season.<\/p>\n
\u2013\u00a0 It was the first absence of the season for Mitchell.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With depth limited, Jovic, after being held out of two of the previous three games, entered first off the bench along with Jaime Jaquez Jr.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Simone Fontecchio followed.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And then Jahmir Young with his first rotation minutes of the season.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Little of it worked.<\/p>\n
\u2013 The bench overly decimated by injuries.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Spoelstra said the expectation was still of quality play at point guard even without Mitchell.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cAnd that\u2019s not to take away from anything that he\u2019s done,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cHe\u2019s been playing great basketball at both ends of the court. We still want to get to our identity, regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Spoelstra said the team\u2019s supporting players have been working to be ready for such moments.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cThe guys work extremely hard behind the scenes,\u201d he said. \u201cThey prepare for these kind of moments. And we try to give them an environment where they can grow and surprise us and continue to get better as the season goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 He added, \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. You don\u2019t want guys to get hurt, but it\u2019s exciting when guys get opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Or, in this case, not.<\/p>\n
\u2013 As for Herro, Saturday\u2019s MRI showed nothing more than a contusion of his right big toe.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Herro is listed as day to day.<\/p>\n
\u2013 So a sigh of relief?<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cI just was going to wait until we found out what the deal was,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cI try not to stress out about things you don\u2019t know about or can\u2019t control.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Observations and other notes of interest from Saturday night\u2019s 127-111 loss to the Sacramento Kings: \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[181,16133,47840,129,121,123,122,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-84821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-miami-heat","10":"tag-miami-heat-blog","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sacramento","13":"tag-sacramento-headlines","14":"tag-sacramento-news","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}