a 113-109 loss Monday night<\/a> to the Dallas Mavericks at Kaseya Center.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing, for sure,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cThis is not the start anybody wanted, but it\u2019s happened. So we have to address what\u2019s in front of us, and we need to continue to get more consistent with our game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Antetokounmpo did his part in trying to hold it together, with 29 points, a season-high 15 rebounds and 11 assists.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou cannot press the panic button and panic, because it\u2019s only going to get worse if you start panicking,\u201d Antetokounmpo said.<\/p>\n
Even with Davion Mitchell adding 21 points, it wasn\u2019t enough on a night Adebayo closed with eight points on 3-of-10 shooting.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan\u2019t overthink basketball man,\u201d Adebayo said of his early-season struggles. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s my shot not going in. The outside noise wants to make me a scapegoat, but when the tables turn, just all that energy, when the energy shifts, just be prepared for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mavericks were led by Cooper Flagg\u2019s 29 points and 11 assists, with Kyrie Irving adding 18 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can see and feel how much our guys want to play well,\u201d Spoelstra said, \u201cand it\u2019s not happening. So we have to just manage that and show the fortitude just to continue to grind until we get a breakthrough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Five Degrees of Heat from Monday night\u2019s game:<\/p>\n
1. Game flow: The Heat led 27-23 after the first period. From there, the Heat moved ahead by 12 in the second period, their first double-digit lead of the season, only to see the Mavericks take a 53-52 lead into halftime.<\/p>\n
The Heat then pushed back to a 10-point lead in the third, only to exit the period up 84-83.<\/p>\n
As in Saturday night\u2019s loss in Charlotte, it was then tied midway through the fourth quarter. Also in Saturday night\u2019s loss, a late dagger upped the challenge, this time a Flagg 3-point play that put the Mavericks up 104-97 with 4:52 to play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we just let go of the rope,\u201d Mitchell said. \u201cI think we had them on their own. And we just kept letting them get easy looks.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Adebayo dunk, only his second basket of the night, drew the Heat within 106-103, before Flagg later countered with a 3-pointer for a 111-105 Dallas lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was probably our best stretch there right before they went to the zone,\u201d Spoelstra said, \u201cand they went to try to mitigate our driving game, and they had some success with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, Adebayo\u2019s third basket, on a tip-in, drew the Heat within 111-109.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Dallas regained possession up two with 31 seconds to play after an errant Andrew Wiggins 3-point attempt.<\/p>\n
Flagg then scored on a driving layup with 10 seconds to play, effectively ending it.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollectively, we\u2019ll get together and continue to forge ahead,\u201d Spoelstra said. \u201cThat\u2019s all you can do right now. Nobody cares about what\u2019s going on with our scores. The league isn\u2019t going to bail us out. So it\u2019s up to us to change it.\u201d<\/p>\n
2. Giannis\u2019 night: Antetokounmpo ended the first half within two assists of his triple-double, with 12 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists at that stage.<\/p>\n
He then completed the triple-double with an assist on a Mitchell 3-pointer with 8:19 to play in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Antetokounmpo became the 15th player in the Heat\u2019s 39 seasons to record a triple-double, now with as many for the Heat as Goran Dragi\u0107, Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Lamar Odom, Shaquille O\u2019Neal, Billy Owens, Steve Smith and Rory Sparrow.<\/p>\n
The Heat\u2019s all-time leaders are Jimmy Butler (13), LeBron James (9), Bam Adebayo (8), Dwyane Wade (5), Hassan Whiteside (4) and Kyle Lowry (3).<\/p>\n
The Heat\u2019s most recent triple-double had been when Jaquez had 16 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists last January at Sacramento.<\/p>\n
It was Antetokounmpo\u2019 s first triple-double in more than a year, since April 11, 2025.<\/p>\n
But the numbers also rang hollow.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some parts that are getting better,\u201d he said of the Heat\u2019s overall play. \u201cDefensively, I think our effort is there. Do we have to watch film and get a lot better? One thousand percent. I feel like sometimes you want something so bad that you kind of freeze in the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Rotation alteration: While Spoelstra remained with the same starting lineup for a fourth consecutive game, there was an adjustment to the rotation.<\/p>\n
The first five remained Antetokounmpo, Adebayo, Mitchell, Wiggins and Klay Thompson.<\/p>\n
But then after Bobby Portis Jr. and Pelle Larsson entered together first off the bench, Dru Smith and Tim Hardaway Jr. followed together.<\/p>\n
That had Smith, who had appeared in only one game for six minutes and did not play Saturday in Charlotte, playing ahead of Nikola Jovic.<\/p>\n
As for Adebayo\u2019s ongoing struggles, Spoelstra said, \u201cI know his makeup and his resiliency. We\u2019ll work together to find a way to get him aggressive and his spots where he\u2019s good.\u201d<\/p>\n
4. 3-3-3-3: After the Heat shot 2 of 7 on 3-pointers in the opening period, they finally found their range at the start of the second, converting, in order, a Portis 3-pointer, a Portis 3-pointer, a Portis 3-pointer and a Smith 3-pointer, forcing Mavericks coach Dusty May to call time, with the 39-30 lead the Heat\u2019s largest to that point of the season.<\/p>\n
All four of those 3-pointers were assisted by Antetokounmpo, who hit one of his own in the first period.<\/p>\n
5. Speaking of: Portis also played to his enforcer reputation later in the second period, after Antetokounmpo was taken down on his power move in the paint by Mavericks center Daniel Gafford.<\/p>\n
Hardaway initially tried to separate the two, with Portis then walking in from the 3-point line and offering a two-hand shove to Gafford\u2019s chest.<\/p>\n
Video review ensued, with Gafford assessed a Flagrant 1 foul and Gafford and Portis assessed offsetting technical fouls.<\/p>\n
It turned into a 3-point possession, with Antetokounmpo making one of his two free throws, the Heat retaining possession, and Wiggins scoring on a driving floater.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a competitor,\u201d Portis said of the scuffle. \u201cI\u2019ve always got my teammates back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, a driving Antetokounmpo in the third quarter caught Gafford with a painful knee to the groin on a play Gafford was called for the foul, with Antetokounmpo turning it into a 3-point play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 This is what victory in the Giannis Antetokounmpo era should look like: \u2014\u00a0A triple-double by the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,3607,4852,3080,154],"class_list":["post-478079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami-heat","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}