MIAMI — Amid a sea of doubt — and a sea of injuries — Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra sat before Saturday night’s game against the Oklahoma City Thunder as a voice of hope, as if seeing something out of focus for outsiders.
“I’m excited about the second half of the season,” he said, with his team opening the second half of its schedule. “I think we have great potential. I think we have an opportunity for this to really start to click.”
He proved prescient.
In an effort that came in the absences of Tyler Herro (rib contusion), Davion Mitchell (shoulder contusion) and Jaime Jaquez Jr. (knee sprain), the Heat pushed past the team with the best record in the NBA 122-120 at Kaseya Center, with Andrew Wiggins closing the scoring with a decisive 3-pointer.
Stepping up in the Heat’s absences were Bam Adebayo, who closed with 30 points and 12 rebounds, shooting 6 of 10 on 3-pointers, and Norman Powell, who scored 19, including 5 of 12 on 3-pointers.
“Bam was sensational,” Spoelstra said. “You’re getting the whole package.”
What the Heat did not have was the defending NBA Most Valuable Player, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scoring 39, his 17th game this season reaching 30 points before the start of the fourth quarter.
No matter, not on a night the Heat committed just four turnovers, outscored the opposition 33-9 on second-chance points and shot 20 of 50 on 3-pointers.
“You see a Miami Heat competitive, collective will out there,” Spoelstra said afterward. “And that, for sure, we’ll build on.”
Against the defending NBA champions, the Heat even managed to survive on a night they shot 20 of 28 from the foul line.
“You’ve got to credit them,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “We could have obviously been better, but I thought they played a really good game.”
A step in the right direction, Powell said, to start the second half of the season.
“The thing about this team,” he said, “we can beat anybody and we can lose to anybody. It’s all about our mentality and our approach.”
And now a more confident approach.
“That,” Adebayo said with emphasis, “was a hard-fought win. We had to scrap for that one. It just shows what we’re capable of. Now it’s on us to be more consistent.”
Five Degrees of Heat from Saturday night’s game:
1. Game flow: The Thunder led 37-30 at the end of the opening period and 65-60 at halftime, before the teams went into the fourth tied 90-90.
With Adebayo converting his 50th 3-pointer of the season, the Heat then tied it 100-100 with 7:39 to play, 22 seconds after Adebayo returned from his final rest.
Five consecutive Adebayo points, including his sixth 3-pointer, later had it tied 116-116 with 3:05 left.
“You play the right way and you’re open, he wants to you shoot the ball,” Adebayo said of Spoelstra giving him the green light.
From there, the Thunder moved to a 120-117 lead, before a pair of Adebayo free throws narrowed the gap to 120-119 with 57.5 seconds to play.
A Heat stop followed, as did a Wiggins 3-pointer with 31.7 seconds left, putting the Heat up 122-120, to close out the scoring.
“That was the play call,” Spoelstra said of the set that left Wiggins open. “That’s how we have to be. We have to trust the right play.”
After misses on both ends, it left the Thunder in possession down two with 3 seconds to play, with Alex Caruso off on a potential game-winning 3-point attempt at the buzzer.
To Powell, it was a complete effort.
“I thought we came out and set the right tone and played to our identity,” he said. “We were able to sustain our identity offensively, defensively throughout the course of the game.”
2. Short again: Spoelstra again had to get creative with his lineup and rotation when working this time in the absences of Herro, Mitchell and Jaquez.
That had him turning to a starting lineup that had rookie Kasparas Jakucionis and second-year Pelle Larsson in the opening mix, along with Adebayo, Powell and Wiggins.
It was the Heat’s 14th lineup in their 42 games, the second start for Jakucionis and the 21st start for Larsson.
The lineup had Kel’el Ware playing his fifth consecutive game off the bench.
Ware, again limited to the minutes Adebayo sat, closed with seven points and nine rebounds in 16 minutes.
“This is the league right now,” Spoelstra said of finding combinations while shorthanded. “Every team is going through some of this version right now. You do have to have depth.”
3. Bench alteration: The twists did not end there, with Simone Fontecchio playing as the first reserve off the bench, up to 10 points at halftime.
It was Fontecchio’s first double-digit outing in 12 games, since he scored 12 against the Celtics on Dec. 19, when the Heat also were shorthanded.
It also was only the second time in his last six games that Fontecchio converted multiple 3-pointers.
“We’ve got to get back to being the spark off the bench,” Fontecchio said of the second unit.
He closed with 13 points and five rebounds.
“Simo really showed up big,” Spoelstra said.
4. Gardner, too: Then there was the contribution of two-way player Myron Gardner, who made three rapid-fire 3-pointers in the second period, when it appeared the Thunder otherwise were pulling away.
Gardner had been scheduled to be in Sioux Falls, S.D., with fellow Heat two-way players Vlad Goldin and Jahmir Young for a Saturday night game there with the Heat’s G League affiliate, but was summoned because of the backcourt void.
“I woke up at 3 a.m. this morning,” Gardner said of his wild itinerary. “I caught two flights to get there.”
Gardner’s previous highest-scoring Heat appearance had been seven points in the Jan. 3 home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, having previously made four 3-pointers in his previous 13 Heat appearances.
He closed with 11 points on 4-of-4 shooting, including 3 of 3 on 3-pointers.
“Myron, it was great to see him come in from Sioux Falls and have an impact in his minutes,” Spoelstra said. “His energy and those efforts were terrific. It’s not just about him knocking down threes. We just felt his presence in all those plays, too.”
5. On the road, again: Up next for the Heat is a five-game western swing that opens Monday night against the Golden State Warriors and continues with games against the Sacramento Kings, Portland Trail Blazers, Utah Jazz and Phoenix Suns.
The Heat head out on a season-worst three-game road losing streak, at 7-13 away from Kaseya Center this season.
“It’s a great opportunity in front of us,” Spoelstra said. “We have a whole second half of the season to go.”