{"id":94815,"date":"2025-12-24T14:11:27","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T14:11:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/94815\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T14:11:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T14:11:27","slug":"an-analysis-of-tuesday-nights-miami-heat-toronto-raptors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/94815\/","title":{"rendered":"An analysis of Tuesday night’s Miami Heat-Toronto Raptors"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u00e3\u2014 Observations and other notes of interest from Tuesday night\u2019s 112-91 loss to the Toronto Raptors<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2013 Self-confidence is one thing.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Self-will is another.<\/p>\n

\u2013 This is not a team with a do-it-alone player.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Jalen Brunson is not walking through that door<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Neither is Zach LaVine.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Or others who have toasted victory over the Heat in December.<\/p>\n

\u2013 When it all was working in lockstep in October and November, the ball movement and off-the-dribble creativity were enough to overcome a degree of talent deficit.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Apparently that came with an expiration date.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Instead, it\u2019s Andrew Wiggins and Simone Fontecchio going off the dribble.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Norman Powell launching in the tightest of spaces.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Bam Adebayo coming up short<\/a> on short jumpers.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Individually it\u2019s not working.<\/p>\n

\u2013 So perhaps a play call?<\/p>\n

\u2013 Perhaps return strategy to the equation?<\/p>\n

\u2013 Add it back in?<\/p>\n

\u2013 Something needs to change.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Because self-will isn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

\u2013 The Heat now a .500 team.<\/p>\n

\u2013 And fading.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Yes, the defense hasn\u2019t been gangbusters lately.<\/p>\n

\u2013 But this is a scoring league.<\/p>\n

\u2013 A pick-and-roll league.<\/p>\n

\u2013 So maybe the Heat weren\u2019t so right, the other teams so wrong.<\/p>\n

\u2013 The Heat again opened with Wiggins, Powell, Adebayo, Kel\u2019el Ware and Davion Mitchell.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Adebayo is now two games from tying Alonzo Mourning on the Heat\u2019s all-time regular-season games list.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Jaime Jaquez Jr. again was first off the Heat bench, entering with the Heat down 16-3, and immediately scoring on his first possession.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Kasparas Jakucionis, Dru Smith and Fontecchio were next off the Heat bench.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Asked pregame about Ware\u2019s recent breakout, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra spoke of it not being a surprise, but how it also has to be accompanied by winning.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u201cI think he had been stacking some good days. And you do that long enough and eventually you start to get some results,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cHis practice sessions were good, film sessions, shootarounds were good. I\u2019m talking about like six weeks ago, when it wasn\u2019t necessarily translating to consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Spoelstra added, \u201cAnd he\u2019s still young. So it\u2019s not always going to be linear. It\u2019s going to be some non-linear jumps. I want there to be some surprises not only with Kel\u2019el, but with other guys. He\u2019s handling it appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Again, Spoelstra stressed that Ware respects it also has to be a team thing.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u201cHe\u2019s being held accountable to winning things,\u201d he said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be like a negative thing. We\u2019re trying. We all want the same thing. We want a better result. We want growth faster. I want him to be like he\u2019s 28, and that\u2019s not realistic. And a little bit of impatience is good, as long as he handles it appropriately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Powell extended his streak of games scoring in double figures to 28, seven off the longest such run of his career.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u00e3\u2014 Observations and other notes of interest from Tuesday night\u2019s 112-91 loss to the Toronto Raptors: \u2013…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[114,123,125,2490,16151,124,2295,110],"class_list":{"0":"post-94815","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-heat-blog","13":"tag-miami-news","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94815","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=94815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}