Miami Heat vs Cleveland Cavaliers Game Breakdown #28

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

Oh, I miss the days when a game against the Cleveland Cavaliers was a game that you knew you’d win.

They are a great team now and I’m sick of these three 7-footers out there. As an NBA fan, I like watching Evan Mobley out there, but man, going up against him and the other bigs is frustrating.

You can’t get mad at these losses — yes, it’s frustrating and you’d like these games to be, at least somewhat competitive. You got to remember though, the Heat are missing their top two players, as well as key rotation players.

You know you’re dealing with injuries when missing Caleb Martin makes a big difference.

The Heat were able to keep themselves in the game for the most part — they went on a few runs, but similar to the previous games, they weren’t able to get stops.

The main reason for this loss was because of the poor shooting and that’s going to be the norm until Jimmy Butler comes back. Without him or a stellar performance from both Tyler Herro and Kyle Lowry, the only way the Heat can win is by having a great shooting night.

It’s either play one of the best defenses or it’s shoot or bust.

Still, we got to see one of the best PJ Tucker games, which is so, so great to see.

Offensive Breakdown

As mentioned, their chance of winning depends on their shooting and this couldn’t have been more clearer than from this game.

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Heat had a 5.9% free throw rate (2nd percentile), the lowest this season. They finished with nine three throws — three of them came from Duncan Robinson’s 3pt attempt.

They only had 18 attempts within 5ft, which is six attempts lower than their season averages. It wasn’t the fact that they didn’t have people driving.

Instead, it was the three 7-footers waiting for anyone that attacked the rim. Once they did, everyone collapsed and there was no way you could’ve finished — and all that meant was drive-and-kicks.

Look at the defense that waits in the paint! Luckily Tucker did finish with 5–8 but there were a few open looks that were simply missed.

But there’s also a reason why they were missed.

The defense didn’t respect KZ Okpala at all. They treated him as if he was Ben Simmons. And that makes life a lot harder for everyone else.

Though these drive-and-kicks still generated a bunch of good looks, not because of the open shot itself, but also because it forced the defense to rotate and this allowed the offense to swing the ball or flow into better action.

One of those actions included a pick-and-roll involving Tucker

Because of the gravity of the shooters, they draw that extra defender for a split second more. And that split second is all the time for Tucker to roll and have that sweet all-floater.

Since Bam Adebayo went down, Tucker’s role on offense has been tremendous — everything Erik Spoelstra asked him to do, he did it perfectly. It’s not too wild to argue that he has been the team’s most valuable player because of his impact on both offense and defense.

I’m not comparing their talent or necessarily their style, but Tucker seems to be that Draymond Green type player for this team — for the third straight game, he finished with five or more assists.

One more good thing before we get to the bad.

People say Robinson has one role and that’s to shoot. But when the team is short-handed, he’s much capable of doing much more on offense. He has shown flashes of this throughout the season, but hasn’t been consistent with it enough.

He seems much more comfortable in attacking and in this game, his quick first step is something I don’t think I’ve seen. Good things happen when people attack the rim.

Now, the bad. Unless the the team is shooting lights out, the team needs more than just one creator on offense. Unfortunately, Herro had an off night.

So far this season, Herro has been the best 3-level scorer on this team. He is the only one that can comfortably get a shot in the mid-range, drive, pull-up for 3, and play off-ball. Though his foul drawing still needs improvements, he has been a consistent scorer for the team.

Without Adebayo and Jimmy, the team needs him to get a bucket — or they will struggle generating offense.

Defensive Breakdown

There were both many positives and negatives on defense.

The defense inside the arc was good for the most part — the Cavaliers were 13–23 from inside 5ft, which is significantly below the league average. They were also 4–12 and 3–10 from the short and long midrange.

There were a bunch of possessions where everyone was doing the right thing on defense — they tagged early, had solid rotations, were in the right position, and had solid one-on-one defense from certain players.

One of the key things was sagging off Isaac Okoro. The defense didn’t respect his shot at all and that meant extra help onto the bigs.

Look at the early help from Robinson here. That’s an easy lob to Jarrett Allen if he’s not there.

Another positive was the overall defense from Tucker.

But there were many bad possessions later on, which allowed the Cavaliers to make a run and put this game away.

It was a combination of poor rotations and decision making — cough cough KZ — and it was also great coaching from the Cavaliers.‍

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