Run it Back! NBA Week in Review, Miami Heat - Week 22

[00:00:00] Week 22 of the 20 24, 25 NB. A season is over, which means it's time to run it back. This is run it back NBA Weekend Review, heat edition. I'm Eric Labrador, contributor@thepeachbasket.net, covering the heat. This is the show where we recap the re the week that was in the NBA. And then highlight the marquee matchup for the week to come. We start with the only objective NB overall, NBA power rankings anywhere. You can read more about how we get to these rankings and see the entire list@thepeachbasket.net. As for the heat, they drop to 23rd in our rankings and 10th in the east. Andrew Wiggins set the tone for the heat this week with his 30 point game against the pistons and 10 field goals made. Duncan Robinson averaged 2.73 point shots, made Kal Ware and Jaime Hake split the rebounding, leads [00:01:00] them at aaba, averaged six assists over the three games and led the team. Kal Ware averaged two blocks per game, so the guys were busy, but in a review of the week. They had a tough one. Not winning one out of the three games going to win three. The Monday loss to the Knicks was over in the third quarter when the Knicks showed why they're the better team with 41 points scored in the third. By the time it was 67, 58 in the third, the game was done against Detroit. The heat fought through the whole game. They were up 1 0 1 93 with 8 51 remaining in the fourth. The heat players looked to have run outta gas with the shooting, though. After it was 1 0 1 93, Highsmith, missed a shot, put layup right under the basket on one, then on a clean look, bam at Abi. Took a three point shot with [00:02:00] 10 seconds left on the clock. Duncan Robinson was to his left, so he had time to pass the ball, but it was still a clean shot hero. Tyler Hi. Took a contested layup that he started with only six seconds left on the shot clock. You want the ball in his hands there, but why did he have to take the shot with six seconds left? The pistons were defending very well that night, but it was a bad contested layup Shot the real head scratcher was bam. At a bio on the next possession. Starts his action with 16 seconds left on the shot clock. Jalen Duran defends the shot perfectly. He goes up and down and Adebayo takes an off balance jumper that he misses. Duh. It was not a good possession. The kicker though, was that the heat still in the game [00:03:00] had a two on one fast break with Davion Mitchell blazing down the left side of the court, and Duncan Robinson on the right. Mitchell had a step on C Cunningham to take the layup, possibly get fouled an N one opportunity. He chose to pass the Duncan Robinson, who got his shot blocked by Cunningham. Doug Robinson at that moment had more of the short side of the court as Cunningham was cheating towards him. Cunningham blocked the shot easily and rescued the ball from going out of bounds. Even with 2 47 remaining, the heat had a chance, but on the next, on another on this possession, Tyler Har started his action and took a three pointer with 14 seconds remaining on the shot clock. At that moment, that is not the shot to take earlier in the first quarter, fine, second quarter. Okay. But when the pistons [00:04:00] have all the momentum, there's 2 47 left. You have 14 seconds remaining on the shot clock. That is the moment to pick your shot and make a score not to take a rushed three pointer. No matter how good he has been in those situations this season, that shot doesn't slow down the momentum of the other team. Then we move on to Houston on Friday. The heat were down 87, 86 with 8 0 5 remaining, and then Houston pushed it to six. Why? Let's look at some of the possessions. Bam started an action at the top of the key. Nobody was doing anything. No other players were moving around. So he goes, drives from the top of the key to the foul line or. And then tries to take a contested layup. He misses it. Houston gets the rebound, pushes it back up.[00:05:00] Then Hero takes a contested layup on Steven Adams. The worst thing about this though, was he drove to the basket perfectly fine, no problem. Tyler's had a lot of success with that. But when Adams is contesting him, Tyler starts to fade away. Avoiding contact on Stephen Adams. Mistake. The shot was at like an off balance layup. He misses it. Hero should have swallowed himself up his pr, his pride, everything, and absorbed the contact on Adams and BAM was under the basket through this whole action. The next one, Andrew Wiggins brought the ball up on the next possession and tried to get around a defender. He got by him like by hair. He took a layup shot, but then Kal Ware was not positioned well for the rebounds. Steven Adams ended up tipping the ball to his man that pushed it up [00:06:00] the court. Then the game was out of reach, not only the heat were in the game against the pistons and against the rockets, they had a chance to win both. But their shot selection, their judgment at crucial points in time was bad. It was way off. So now on to the marque matchup, as I said last week and the week before, because the heat are in the play and tournament, seven, eight, ninth, and now 10th seed. The entire week's games are important, the heats, so I'm gonna talk about all of them. The heat have four games this week, three at home, and one away. They're gonna play Charlotte tonight at 6:00 PM and bam will be playing. But it's still not known as of the time of this recording. If Tyler Hero's gonna play, it's a tossup. If the heater gonna beat Charlotte or not, to be honest with the funk that this team is [00:07:00] in, and even though Coach Stro will deny it it seems like everybody's going for themselves. Would be nice to beat Charlotte because the last time the heat blew a lead. So it'd be good to get back a win against Charlotte Tuesday. It is the much anticipated reunion with Jimmy Butler. The Golden State Warriors come in and they're six in the west and eight and two in their last 10. Then they, he play Atlanta on Thursday and travel to play the Sixers on Saturday night. Let's see what happens. This leads me into the full court press in a Google search on the heat and keywords related to the heat. I found the following three in interesting articles. There's Ira Windman writes in the Sunset that Jimmy Butler really doesn't care about the matchup this week against the heat. He got what he wanted. He's on the best situation and the best chance to win a title that [00:08:00] he has with Golden State. There's no pressure on him because Steph Curry is the well established leader of the team. And Draymond Green is also, Jimmy could just be himself, distribute, play. He could pick and choose, his spots. And they have a culture there. They're successful. The heat have completely fallen apart after he left. So of course he's gonna say it doesn't matter. Whatever. Because he knows that if he doesn't make a deep playoff run with the Warriors the window on him is really gonna narrow and almost close. So it really doesn't mean anything coming to Miami, but that doesn't deny the fact that it would be nice to win the game against. And for Wiggins, Andrew Wiggins, Kyle Anderson, and Davion Mitchell. To have good games that night, it would be nice. Number two, Dwayne Wade [00:09:00] is going to be the new co-host on Jenna and friends with Jenna Bush Hager on CNBC. Wade in an article on essentially Sports, on the, essentially sports website was talking about how he was had to, he was a rookie all over again. He did host the game, show the Cube. I don't know if it's still. Going on anymore. But he's he had to learn how to be a co-host on a show. So he said he had to look at tape of himself. Hopefully he looked at tape of Michael Strahan or Nate Burleson, who have really made the transition from being former athletes into studio hosts and entertainers on morning television. And finally Gilbert Arenas on his on his podcast with a hot take that Pat Riley should fire himself. Now, Gilbert Arenas does hot takes really just to get attention trying to have some [00:10:00] significance in the NBA landscape. But before Jimmy Butler pat Riley did make a mistake. Make some key mistakes in signing James Johnson to a long-term contract. Dion Waiters, Tyler Johnson with the five year $55 million match. I remember that in free agency. And signing Hassan Whiteside. Those were four big mistakes that, that he ended up paying for. I remember the whole. Heat culture craze when they went 30 and 11 after going 11 and 30 one season, and all these guys got big contracts and then they were all overpaid. And I remember myself even listening in the summer of 2019 that, our Windman, the Sun Sentinel Beat Rider was explaining that the heat probably wouldn't be able to do much in free agency because of the problems that they had [00:11:00] with the previous signings. So. A broken clock is right twice a day, and Gilbert Arenas might be onto something that Pat Riley might have to step down. There was some hot takes that people were making that Eric Spra should move into the front office and Chris Quinn would, should be the new head coach. It's gonna be real interesting to see the difference between, um. The hot takes and what actually happens. So that's the end of my report and week 22 is in the books. Join me next week after week 23 when we run it back.