MIAMI \u2014 Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra began the night speaking about recent quality pockets of play, even as his team entered on a three-game losing streak. He also warned of how third-period lulls had produced that skid.<\/p>\n
So again on Monday, quality pockets of play.<\/p>\n
And, again, a third-quarter lull.<\/p>\n
This time, though, a different final chapter, with Bam Adebayo and Norman Powell draining late 3-pointers to end the skid and produce a 127-121 victory Tuesday night over the Phoenix Suns at Kaseya Center.<\/p>\n
From a 20-point lead early in the third period, the Heat had to fight to the finish, with the fight there on a night Adebayo found his shooting stroke and Powell returned from a one-game absence due to back pain.<\/p>\n
Adebayo led the Heat with 29 points and nine rebounds, supported by 27 points from Powell and 23 from Tyler Herro.<\/p>\n
Up next on this three-game home stand is a Thursday night game against the Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n
Five Degrees of Heat from Tuesday night\u2019s game:<\/p>\n
1. Game flow: The Heat led 36-28 after the first quarter, went up 18 in the second period before taking a 71-54 lead into the intermission.<\/p>\n
But that is when the Suns outscored the Heat 20-4 to open the third period, ultimately resulting in a 92-92 tie going into the fourth.<\/p>\n
With 9:11 to play, the Suns then took their first lead, at 101-99, eventually pushing their lead to seven.<\/p>\n
A pair of Adebayo 3-pointers then cut the deficit to 114-113 with 2:27 to play, with another putting the Heat up 116-114 with 1:49 left.<\/p>\n
From there, it was tied twice,\u00a0 before a Powell 3-pointer put the Heat up 121-118 with 48.2 seconds to play.<\/p>\n
A pair of Suns turnovers followed, leaving the Heat in possession up three with 11.5 seconds to play, effectively ending it.<\/p>\n
2. Bam back: After a miserable stretch of low scoring and missed shots, Adebayo took and made the Heat\u2019s first two shots, then moving to 4 of 4 from the field and 2 of 2 on 3-pointers, scoring 10 of the Heat\u2019s first 21 points.<\/p>\n
Adebayo entered having scored in single digits in two of his three previous games, including six points in Sunday night\u2019s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n
Adebayo\u2019s 16 points at halftime match his high over the previous 11 appearances.<\/p>\n
3. Tyler time: Meanwhile, Herro continued with his ease of offense in his fourth game back after being sidelined since Dec. 9 with a toe contusion.<\/p>\n
Herro then got a chance as the focus of the Heat offense when Powell was forced to the bench with his fifth foul with 5:02 to play.<\/p>\n
Herro closed 8 of 18 from the field.<\/p>\n
4. Powell plays: Sidelined Sunday by lower-back soreness, Powell returned to the mix, which required another Spoelstra shuffle.<\/p>\n
This time it was Powell back into a starting lineup alongside Adebayo, Herro, Andrew Wiggins and Davion Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Pelle Larsson had started Sunday in place of Powell.<\/p>\n
The revised mix had Dru Smith out of the initial rotation, as was the case when Powell last played, in Saturday\u2019s loss in Indiana.<\/p>\n
Through it all, Kel\u2019el Ware played his third consecutive game off the bench.<\/p>\n
5. Mitchell goes out: Mitchell took a jolt to his left shoulder fighting through a screen early in the third quarter. With his left arm hanging at his side, he then scored in transition on the next possession.<\/p>\n
But with 9:07 left in the third quarter, after being called for his fourth foul, Mitchell went to the locker room, replaced by Smith.<\/p>\n
He closed with nine points and six assists in his 19 minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra began the night speaking about recent quality pockets of play, even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,123,125,2490,124,2295,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-117298","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-miami","8":"tag-latest-headlines","9":"tag-miami","10":"tag-miami-headlines","11":"tag-miami-heat","12":"tag-miami-news","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}