Miami Heat vs Memphis Grizzlies Game Breakdown #25

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

I’ve seen the news that Jimmy Butler was back and thought, finally, they’re going to be back on track now.

Nope. Not even close.

So, many bad things you can point to — a 92.9 offensive rating, 23.5 turnover percentage, allowing nine more offensive rebounds, and shooting 27.3% from deep.

Many, many things.

What sucked about this game is there weren’t many silver linings either. No particular standout performance and Butler had to reaggravate his injury.

It’s again one of those games where there isn’t much to take away from, nor should you overreact and flip everything upside down.

Offensive Breakdown

The Memphis Grizzlies won the first quarter 34–25, but why is that significant?

The Heat are 10–2 after winning the first quarter and are 4–9 when losing it. Starting off behind, especially when dealing with injuries is not a good recipe for winning. We’ve seen this against the Milwaukee Bucks too.

Did you know the Heat had nine field goals made and seven turnovers in that first quarter?

How does that even happen?

Not only were the turnovers an issue, but one of the things I’ve noticed was there were many early offenses opportunities that didn’t go anywhere. Over half of the plays started as an early offense in the first quarter, yet they only had eight fastbreak points.

And the offense didn’t get better after that either.

I don’t know how Butler, clearly injured, was the second in field goal attempt. The second-best player on the team, Kyle Lowry, only had nine attempts — three in the second half. What’s worse is he played 40 minutes.

Though, not much related to the offense, the minute’s distribution was strange — quite strange. There is Lowry with 40, Caleb Martin with 31, and no one else played over 30 minutes.

Maybe they decided to rest the starters, but why is Lowry playing so many? Just unusual coaching yesterday.

Finally, here’s something interesting about Tyler Herro.

Herro lead the game in points, but the way he got his shots was surprising. 81.8% of his shots were assisted, which is the highest this season. He wasn’t creating the shots on the ball but instead was mainly scoring in transition or cuts — he had his second-highest % of points coming from the fastbreak.

Defensive Breakdown

Although the offense was the main issue, whenever the offense did work in stretches, the defense couldn’t get any stops.

Every time the Heat have managed to cut the lead, the Grizzlies had the answer.

And it wasn’t that their offense was too good, but instead, it was the Heat’s defensive breakdowns that cost them easy points.

In two instances, the defense seemed to be over helping — like sinking down way too deep and being late to a closeout.

One of the reasons for that extra help was mainly on a mismatch or when they blitzed a screen. In the first clip above, after the blitz, Steven Adams rolled to the rim and because of that drew three defenders.

Now, I understand Adams is a big guy, but does he need that level of attention from three extra defenders down low.

Speaking of Dewayne Dedmon blitzing:

That’s what happens when you don’t want to, or can’t, switch both screens. The Heat don’t want to Dedmon switching, so the plan is for him to blitz until the initial defender recovers, then he recovers to his man.

The issue in this play, however, Butler got stuck fighting through that screen and it took him longer than it should have. At the same time, Dedmon stuck with the ball handler for too long and didn’t get back to Jaren Jackson Jr. While that’s happening, Jackson is rolling, he forces a tag and it’s a simple skip pass.

Another play late in the second quarter that resulted in an open 3 was simply lazy defense.

Firstly, both Robinson and PJ Tucker do a great job at recognizing the threat and rotate well.

But watch Martin. The ball is on the opposite side and he is still staying low next to his man. After Robinson rotates, that’s where Martin should have been higher — around that elbow — to being able to close out on either guy or fully rotate to him and have Butler take the corner, as he did.

And if you look at the score and the timing of these 3s, it kills that momentum. The Heat were always so close but weren’t able to get stops when it mattered.‍

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