Miami Heat vs Cleveland Cavaliers Game Breakdown #22

Welcome to Simply Ballin’s game breakdown of the Miami Heat. After each game, you will see my thoughts on the game, film breakdown, and other interesting bits that stood out to me.

Quick Thoughts

Sigh, this game felt like it was over before it even began.

After the unfortunate news regarding Bam Adebayo and how he’s going to miss significant time, this game didn’t feel that important.

And that was before finding out that Jimmy Butler also wouldn’t be playing. So, the game was going to be without the two top players — the next day, I didn’t bother waiting to finish the game before checking.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have been a solid team this year and I wasn’t expecting a huge win, but I also didn’t expect a huge loss.

Losing the game 111–85 was not ****the result I could’ve imagined.

So, what went wrong? Oh yeah, the offense — which was kinda obvious that they could have struggled.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Cavaliers have the fifth-best defense for the season and had the third-best in the past two weeks. It certainly helps to have three seven-footers roaming around.

It also doesn’t help to have two players — cough cough Kyle Lowry and Duncan Robinson — not showing up offensively. And that was the reason why the heat had the third-worst offensive rating in this game.

On a brighter note, though, the bench combined for 40 points.

Offensive Breakdown

I’ve decided to do something new for this game, mainly the first quarter where I go through the play-by-play and see what the Heat did on each possession.

By doing so, I’ve noticed a couple of trends and patterns that have occurred throughout the game.

The first one that, reallyyyy, frustrated me is what has been common with Lowry — his driving.

He had 13 drives, but only accounted for two points from those drives. He had three shot attempts, eight passes made, one trip to the line, and one turnover.

The fact alone that he’s not attempting a lot of shots or is passing out more is not a problem in itself — it’s how it affects the rest of the offense.

There have been six possessions where he did decide to drive, but there was no attempt at all to look to score — nothing and I don’t think that even made any difference in the defensive rotations.

And in those possessions, all it happened was wasting time on offense and getting a bad look.

This is what I meant. This play that ended with a Tyler Herro ISO happened because of the start of the play.

There were a couple of Herro’s ISOs and that’s not good. Per NBA, in 32 possessions, he has scored 16 points — good for 0.50 points per possession. This would rank him second-worst behind Dillon Brooks amongst players with at least one possession per game.

Speaking of ISOs, the Heat must have not got the memo about Evan Mobley. I don’t know why they kept trying to go at him when they’ve failed miserably multiple times.

On a good note, there were a couple of Lowry post-up possessions that resulted in good baskets.

I know there is the whole Robinson talk and by talk, I mean slander and hate. But look at the screening action and yes, the “ gravity” that he provides.

More Robinson gravity.

There wasn’t much else to say about the offense.

Whenever I see Herro attempt so many shots, it’s because of the other stars — here, both Lowry and Robinson didn’t do their part.

Defensive Breakdown

It was also one of those days on the defensive end — it’s concerning that I’m saying “ it’s one of those days” again, for the second game in a row.

The Cavaliers shot 51% on 31 3s.

At least it wasn’t one guy killing them, but instead, it was just an overall good game from the team — six players finished with double digits.

There were a few things that stood out.

When the Heat go into the zone, they need to do a better job at defending the middle and not allowing a good passer in that area — it only leads to bad things.

And here, it led to open 3s being knocked down.

There was also one particular play from Jarrett Allen where it starts out with a double drag, but he immediately rolls behind the drop defender.

It was an interesting play to see, as they’ve used it twice in a row — all leading to quality baskets.

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Originally published at https://www.simplyballin.com.