LOS ANGELES \u2014 The eve of Election Day proved to be a scathing referendum on a failed start to the season for the Miami Heat.<\/p>\n
In the wake of Monday night\u2019s 138-117 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a>, a game Lakers guard Luka Doncic dominated with his 42 points, it left the Heat seeing red and feeling more than blue.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re not playing hard enough,\u201d prized offseason acquisition Giannis Antetokounmpo said, his comment coming in a Crypto.com locker room long vacated by the rest of his teammates, speaking nearly 90 minutes after Monday night\u2019s humbling final buzzer. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to play harder. We\u2019ve got to have some pride. We\u2019ve got to have some pride. Individual pride, first of all.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then we\u2019ve got to keep one another accountable and trust one another defensively. Right now we don\u2019t trust one another. We\u2019re not giving that extra effort.\u201d<\/p>\n It was just two weeks ago that the Heat exited the preseason confident that, at the least, their defense would carry them through the adjustment period to a new rotation, fuel a new optimism.<\/p>\n Instead, the team awoke Tuesday ranked No. 27 in the league in defensive rating, 27th in points allowed, 29th in opposing 3-point percentage, with opponents making a league-high 17.3 3-pointers per game.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got to figure this out,\u201d center Bam Adebayo said. \u201cNobody is going to come save this ship. We got to dig ourselves out of this hole. And obviously, when we get tired of touching that hot stove enough, we\u2019re going to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, opposing stars are sizzling<\/a> against a shockingly tepid Heat defensive response<\/a>. Even before Donic\u2019s 42 points on Monday night at the start of this five-game western swing, there were 45 points from Minnesota\u2019s Anthony Edwards in the Heat\u2019s opening-night loss, 34 from Charlotte\u2019s Brandon Miller in a loss to the Hornets and 29 to Dallas\u2019 Cooper Flagg in a loss to the Mavericks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve played Anthony Edwards; we didn\u2019t take his game away,\u201d Antetokounmpo said. \u201cWe played Luka; we didn\u2019t take his game away. We\u2019ve just got to figure out a game plan that can work against players like that.\u201d<\/p>\n Against the Lakers, it wasn\u2019t only Doncic\u2019s scoring, it also was yielding 13 assists to the Lakers\u2019 star, effectively allowing him get his own and allowing his teammates to get their own, with Austin Reeves adding 27 points.<\/p>\n The thought entering the season was that a roster featuring respected defenders such as Antetokounmpo, Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins and Davion Mitchell would hardly need to resort to schemes and gimmicks.<\/p>\n Instead, the Heat early on in Monday night\u2019s game were reduced to trapping and double-teaming Donic and eventually forced into the Hail Mary of a zone.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that we think that it\u2019s gonna happen because we\u2019re really good individual defenders,\u201d Mitchell said of what is proving to be a fatal flaw. \u201cIf we don\u2019t, if you don\u2019t want to play defense as a team, then you can\u2019t do it by yourself. So, it\u2019s not surprising.\u201d<\/p>\n But it assuredly is humbling, even a bit humiliating.<\/p>\n \u201cThe starting group, it\u2019s almost like we\u2019re going through the motions,\u201d Antetokounmpo said. \u201cWe can be better.\u201d<\/p>\n And it all played Monday night out in front of Heat President Pat Riley, who took it in from the stands, seated just a few rows back from the Heat bench, witness to the Heat allowing a staggering 79 points in the first half, including 24 by that stage to Doncic.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the first half they were getting everything. He had the 24 (appearing) on his way to 50,\u201d Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. \u201cAnd then the support guys, and I say that with great, great respect, they had 45. So we\u2019re losing those battles and losing the battles with him, even while we\u2019re trying to trap and get the ball out of his hands.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not good enough. Our locker room knows it\u2019s not good enough. We need to be just a whole lot more consistent defensively, regardless of whatever the scheme may be.\u201d<\/p>\n Two weeks in, and it\u2019s as if a degree of trust is gone.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got to full-out trust each other,\u201d Adebayo said, \u201cbecause a lot of times I feel like when fatigue sets in, we stop communicating, and that\u2019s when mistakes happen. That\u2019s when the lack of effort is there. Got to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n With that, the Heat and the rest of the NBA took Tuesday off, in deference to Election Day, with Spoelstra left to ruminate on referendums of his own ahead of Wednesday night\u2019s game against the Los Angeles Clippers at the Intuit Dome.<\/p>\n \u201cI need to do a better job of getting this group to defend to our potential,\u201d Spoelstra said in a postgame interview that came off as more of a confessional. \u201cWe\u2019re all accountable to this, everybody in that locker room, the players and the staff alike, we have to figure it out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2014 The eve of Election Day proved to be a scathing referendum on a failed start…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,123,125,2490,124,2295,110],"class_list":["post-446294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-heat","tag-miami-news","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446294","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=446294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}