The Heat faced the Thunder on Wednesday, February 12 at Paycom Center with the return of Tyler Herro, who was in doubt for a stomach illness, and the contest of newcomers Andrew Wiggins and Davion Mitchell in the starting quintet.
He was about to beat the NBA’s best team this season, but again the Miami club wasted a good lead again, which became 20 points, to fall dramatically 115-101 to the Oklahoma City quintet.
A miserable last quarter (32-8), both in defense and attack, upset the aspirations of the quintet of the Capital of the Sun.
The worst part is that coach Erik Spoelstra is once again unable to change the turns in time, even seeing his rival open the quarter-final with all his artillery.
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Of the Heat’s 27 defeats in the season on nine, he has squandered winning advantages in the last half.
In addition to three games with less than 10 points in the last quarter, not counting the multiple falls in the second part. Everyone is guilty but in particular, Spoelstra is flagged.
With this defeat, his third in consecutive form, the Heat (25-27) fell from 7th to 9th place in the Eastern Conference, before visiting the Mavericks in Dallas on Thursday 13th.
In the end, the statistics were quite even, except for the percentage of shots to the hoop where the Thunder were better with 48.9 and four triples more, for 45.6 in Miami.
Bam Adebayo was again the Heat’s best with a double-double of 27 points (3-4 in triples) and 15 rebounds; in addition to his usual good defense.
And it was seen that Herro was not 100 percent. Although he reached 14 units (1-6 in triples) and 6 assists his -23 differential condemns him.
Mitchel settled more and being more aggressive he reached another 14 cartons, but with only 3 assists. He fought well in defense.
Wiggins was 13 points, though he had extra work in defense. He was one of the few players who ended up with a positive differential. For the second unit, they pulled out Nikola Jovic and Alec Burks with 11 points each.
The difference was that Jovic left with 3 in his performance and Burks reached a -14, which speaks of each other’s defense in the time they were on the court.
For Oklahoma City, it starred Shai Gilgeous-Alexander with 32 points, Jalen Williams with 18, Luguentz Dort with 17, Kenrich Williams with 14, Aaron Wiggins with 11, and Isaiah Joe with 10.
Miami won with authority the first 36-24 relying on a great defense that allowed a 12-4 start and an offensive, led by an aggressive Adebayo with 13 points, which served him to take more than 10 units of advantage, the same as the star of the Thunder Gilgeous-Alexander.
This time the Heat’s second unit was able to maintain the lead and with the innings of some of the holders stretched their lead to 20 points, but in the end, OKC with a ferocious offensive (12-3) managed to narrow the difference to take the 29-28 partial.
Miami went to rest ahead of the score 63-52 with the same protagonists and 14 more points in the painting.
With a good start in the third, the Heat extended the lead to 16 points, but the Thunder recovered and managed again to reduce it to 11th in the middle of the fourth.
The local team managed again to win the fourth by a minimum of 31-30 although the Heat maintained command, after this tough fight, 93-83.
The Thunder, with two consecutive triples, reduced the difference to four at the beginning of the decisive last partial and then tied the game without the first two minutes having been completed.
A triple from Gilgeous-Alexander put OKC ahead for the first time on the night and then reached a 21-0 rally without Spoelstra finding an answer.
Adebayo broke zero in the fourth, but the Miami team was unable to stop the bleeding and lost by 10 points 4 minutes from the end.
Oklahoma City took the partial with a blunt and at the same time embarrassed 32-8 to take the win by 14 points.
