Mateo’s Hoop Diary: Heatles embarrassed in Boston

The depleted Heat went on tour to face the undermanned Celtics, getting smacked around and thrown to the curb. The champs mowed down coverages. Luke Kornet turned into Goliath, derailing smaller men with six blocks. And Bam Adebayo had another disappearing act.

Boston’s Payton Pritchard, Derrick White and Jaylen Brown did most of the damage with 14 artillery strikes. And Gang Green’s protections were as strict as a medieval lord during a famine, permitting the Heatles just nine of 25 paint shots during the first half, then shutting them down further and forcing 11 turnovers in the second.

Had things gone close to according to plan for the visitors, Keshad Johnson, an undrafted rookie on a two-way deal, wouldn’t have logged the first six minutes of his career in a second-half blowout.

Despite Boston’s superior talent, both squads were on the second night of a back-to-back, but only the hosts looked like a serious team.

Yet again, the self-proclaimed hardest-working, best-conditioned, most professional, unselfish, toughest, meanest, nastiest team in the NBA was softer in all of those areas than a despised rival.

This is just in: coach Erik Spoelstra contemplated testing temporary insanity like Pat Riley used to but couldn’t figure out which team member to sacrifice. He is waiting to go rapid-fire in the next film session.

Perhaps he shouldn’t tell the players that if the Celtics’ physical defense is going to neutralize them, he’ll save Boston the trouble and take them out himself, like vintage Riley after the Memorial Day massacre in 1985. But he should have Adebayo sit in the front row and continuously rewind his offensive lowlights for the season.

Adebayo, the team captain, is having his worst year as a starter. Jimmy Butler’s cape looks too large for him, like when Silvio Dante couldn’t handle the pressure of being the boss when Tony Soprano was in a coma.

He used to be a threat to score, but this was his ninth outing of the year, logging below 40% of his field goal attempts. He only had 12 last year in 71 games, and the season before that, it was nine times in 75 matches. Keep in mind that the Heat are nearly a quarter of the way through the year.

The captain’s mojo is missing like a boxer who has lost the sting behind the punch. He is taking slightly fewer shots in the restricted area and is down considerably in volume in his sweet spot- the paint non-restricted area. Accuracy has dropped by 8.8% and 12.7%.

Against no Kristaps Porziņģis, Monday’s game was the perfect opportunity for Adebayo to get back on track and it turned into another misused moment.

When asked what went wrong with the offense, he said, “We missed a lot of shots we normally make.”

The Heat got next to nothing from Duncan Robinson, too. He totaled five points on two of nine tries but missed all six from deep. Some of those were open-enough looks provided by Adebayo.

Likely because of the flight back to Miami, the team will not practice Tuesday, but it should. Don’t forget that Riley is no stranger to hopping off the charter and telling his guys to hit the hardwood. January and February are usually the “watch out” months that he’s warned about, but it behooves the Heatles to treat December the same way.

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