Miami Heat lack answers for Luka Doncic in loss to Lakers

LOS ANGELES — The blueprint for success that the Heat turned to this summer was on display Monday night at Crypto.com Arena.

The problem was it was on display by the opposition.

Get a great player. Surround with complementary talent. Ride the coattails.

The Lakers did just that in this one, with Luka Doncic, on the scoring roll of his career, powering Los Angeles past the Heat 138-117 with his 42 points.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, landed by the Heat to do the same, ultimately could not keep pace, closing with 30 points.

So the Lakers improved to 6-2, while the Heat fell to 2-5.

“It’s not good enough,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of his team’s defense. “Our locker  room knows it’s not good enough. We need to be just a whole lot more consistent defensively.”

Shooting 14 of 24 from the field and 8 of 10 from the foul line, Doncic rounded out his stat line with 13 assists and seven rebounds. He was supported by 27 points from Austin Reaves, with the type of one-two punch the Heat could not counter.

Antetokounmpo rounded out his stat line with 12 rebounds and seven assists.

The Heat also got 19 points from Klay Thompson and 15 from Davion Mitchell, but nothing more than a mundane 16 points and nine rebounds from Bam Adebayo.

“I need to do a better job of getting this group to defend to our potential,” Spoelstra said. “We’re all accountable to this, everybody in that locker room, the players and the staff alike. We have to figure it out, and we’re fully capable of doing it.”

That stood as the theme in the postgame locker room.

“I feel like we just got to truly trust each other on that end,” Adebayo said of the defensive collapses. “I feel like it’s, we think we give enough, and it’s not.  I feel like we got to full out trust each other, because a lot of times I feel like when fatigue sets in, we stop communicating, and that’s when mistakes happen.”

Five Degrees of Heat from Monday night’s game:

1. Game flow: The Lakers led 37-30 at the end of the opening period and 79-72 at halftime. The 79 points tied for the most yielded by the Heat in a first half in their 39 seasons.

“I mean, we never got a handle on any aspect of it,” Spoelstra said of his team’s defense. “You expect it to be a big challenge with a savant like Doncic. But in the first half they were getting everything.

“Going into the locker room, you score 72, you’re not expecting to be down.”

Mitchell was up to four 3-pointers by halftime, already surpassing his previous season high, closing a 4 of 4 on 3-pointers.

The Lakers then opened the second period with an 11-0 run, pushed their lead into the 20s midway through the third quarter and went into the fourth up 111-93.

“We gotta have a better sense of urgency,” Mitchell said.

2. Luka time: Doncic played as advertised, entering with a league-leading 37.2 scoring average (Stephen Curry was second at 27.6), at 43.8 over his previous four games.

He was up to 16 points by the end of the first period, drawing constant traps and double teams. He stood with 24 points and eight assists at halftime, his fifth consecutive game with at least 20 points in the first half.

Doncic was coming off a 45-point, 15-rebound, five-assist, five-steal performance in Sunday’s home victory over the Toronto Raptors. It was the fourth time in five games that Doncic scored at least 40.

Entering Monday, the only players who had scored more points than Doncic over their first six games of a season were Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, and Jack Twyman.

“He can make plays, every play in the book that you need to make as a point-of-attack guy,” Spoelstra said. “You have to pick him up 30 feet. He can make every pass in the book.  He can read your defense.

“He understands what we’re trying to do. He positions guys in the right spots and he makes the right play over and over and over. That’s what the greats do.”

Doncic also was his usual feisty self, called for a second-period technical foul for complaining about the officiating.

3. Giannis’ night: Antetokounmpo’s efficiency helped the Heat somewhat keep pace with Doncic, up to 20 points, five assists and four rebounds by halftime.

Spoelstra twice in the first half successfully challenged offensive fouls that were called on Antetokounmpo, with the second successful challenge leading to an Antetokounmpo 3-point play.

Antetokounmpo had 24 points entering the fourth quarter, closing at 10 of 17 from the field.

4. Foul start: What started with a first-possession Lakers challenge leading to a foul on Antetokounmpo 27 seconds into the game turned into a foul opening period for the Heat, with Thompson, Mitchell and Bobby Portis each ending the first quarter with two fouls.

The early foul trouble for Mitchell had second-round pick Ryan Conwell, the rookie guard out of Louisville, playing his earliest minutes of the season, with the foul trouble for Portis affording playing time for Nikola Jovic in the first half.

5. Onward: The Heat’s five-game western swing continues Wednesday night against the Clippers, before concluding with games Thursday night against the Golden State Warriors, Sunday against the Sacramento Kings and next Tuesday against the Utah Jazz.

That will be followed by a five-game homestand that spans from Nov. 13 through Nov. 22.

The theme going forward clearly be a defensive focus.

“We gotta want to play defense,” Mitchell said. “I think that we think that it’s gonna happen because we’re really good individual defenders. But we got to want to play and it starts with me.”

Said Adebayo, “Once we figure that out, that’s when this team can really be great.”