Mateo’s Hoop Diary: Concerning Trends for the Miami Heat Late in the Season

The end of the regular season is quickly approaching, and the Heat wasted another opportunity to regain ground in the standings. True to its nature, whenever Miami starts showing a semblance of its former self, the group reminds its observers why it shouldn’t be trusted.

The outfit’s latest back-to-back road trip ended in a split against sub-.500 teams. Chicago struck first blood Saturday, and Miami regrouped for a win over Detroit Sunday.

A Dub over the Pistons, who have 16 wins, is not enough to wash away the Heat’s recent sins. Detroit was down its two finest snipers, Bojan Bogdanović and Alec Burks, and it still found a way to momentarily take a seven-point lead towards the end of the third quarter led by young players and dudes no other team wanted.

For the eight previous games to the weekend tour, the Heatles were converting 40% of its 3-point attempts. In the last two, Miami reverted to misfiring on makeable looks, dropping only 30% of its tries.

Aside from the hopeless shooting return, the defense has lost its bite. For the season, this crew is second of 30 teams in opponent points allowed (109.5). In the last 14 games since coming back from the All-Star break, Miami has dropped to 17th (114.6) in the same category while going .500.

The paint protection hasn’t been as strict for the last 14 games as well. The Heat is giving up 49.9 interior points when the back line was its strongest characteristic on defense all year. The squad has done such a fine job for most of the season containing the square that it is still second in the league in guarding the box.

On the visit to Chicago, Miami suffered its fourth first half giving up at least 70 points since the weeklong hiatus. Each time a rival has gashed them this hard through the first 24 minutes, they lose. Milwaukee, Philadelphia, New York and now the 10th-seeded Chicago outfit ravaged the Heat early in the last encounters. The only one of these nights Miami found its stroke from the outside was against the Knicks on March 3, but the team had to come back from down 15 points.

Enough time has passed this season to understand that the Heat is not a team built to come back from leads or sustain them. The role players are not as precise from deep as last year when the group had the most accurate long-range shooters in the league. This decline is one of the main reasons why the Heat has found itself in so many close games.

Going 2-0 over the weekend would have put them a half-game behind the Brooklyn Nets for sixth place in the East, but the White and Red sit a match back. Hurdling a spot in the standings with that bit of separation and nine games left is feasible. But only for good teams. Three of Miami’s last seven losses have come against below .500 squads. Through 89% of the campaign, the Heat haven’t been more than mediocre.

Five of the last nine games are on the road, where the band’s record sits at 15-21.

It’s still too early to call if the Heat will thwart the sixth seed, but if it grabs it, Miami is likely a first-round exit. Boston or Philadelphia will claim the third spot, and neither is a favorable matchup with how Miami has struggled to defend the point of attack. If it enters the Play-In Tournament, the Heat may go down there.