Friday night\u2019s loss to the Knicks<\/a> at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n\u201cKel\u2019el was very impactful, those last several minutes. That\u2019s certainly growth,\u201d Spoelstra said.<\/p>\n
In closing with 16 points, 14 rebounds and three blocked shots, Ware recorded his fourth consecutive double-double, now with double-digit rebounds in six of his last seven games.<\/p>\n
The difference Monday was a glimpse into a motivated Ware, able to draw upon the disappointment of Friday\u2019s failure.<\/p>\n
Monday\u2019s mission?<\/p>\n
\u201cGet the ball,\u201d he told the entire arena during his walk-off interview following Monday night\u2019s victory. \u201cI think that was what was going through everybody\u2019s head, \u2018Get the ball. Get the game over with.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t let what happened last game happen this game.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, instead, there was a decisive late blocked shot that was confirmed by replay as not being the goaltend that initially was called.<\/p>\n
And there was force. Fierce force.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean you just felt the multiple efforts,\u201d Spoelstra said, with the Heat shifting their attention to Wednesday night\u2019s visit by the Golden State Warriors. \u201cEven the block that was called a goaltend, it was a great effort on his part. The rebounding was very intentional. And the multiple efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n
A sequence with 4:05 to play illustrated to Spoelstra what a motivated Ware could be.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought that drive that he had with four minutes to go, was kind of a loose ball, caught on the baseline, it could have been one of those flip shots,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cBut he wanted to make sure that this thing was going to the rim and got the and-one.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat showed me there\u2019s growth in time-score-context swing moments, \u2018Hey, let\u2019s just not get a shot that you might think in the first three minutes of the game.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
The mindset was there, instead of some of the mindlessness that had grown infuriating.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd it\u2019s not always going to be perfect,\u201d Powell said. \u201cIt\u2019s not always going to be perfect where he\u2019s hitting every shot. But those hustle plays, those energy plays, those second and third opportunities, hustling for the ball, offensive rebounds and things like that is what we need. We feed off that and we saw that.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I think he\u2019s doing a good job. There\u2019s going to be ups and downs. But as long as he stays mentally tough and fights through the adversity, it\u2019s going to be good, because we need him.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the fight is there, Spoelstra said Ware is a different player, this time taking on the challenges of both helping contain Karl-Anthony Towns and backstopping the defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not talking about necessarily getting stops,\u201d Spoelstra said of Ware\u2019s defensive turns against Towns, who was down from Friday night\u2019s 39 points to 22 Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s just you have to negotiate through a lot of different things \u2014 pick-and-roll basketball, flares, a guy who knows how to draw fouls, is crafty. And then when he\u2019s not on him, like, hey, you got to control the paint and make sure you\u2019re protecting the rim for us. There\u2019s a lot of different kind of roles that he had to do throughout the course of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 \u00a0At 32, Norman Powell recognized he had to find a way to bridge the age gap…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":52511,"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-52510","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\/52510","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=52510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}