Miami Heat vs Milwaukee Bucks Game Breakdown #26

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

Arguably the best win of the season. Prior to the game, when the Milwaukee Bucks had Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday, and Khris Middleton, they were undefeated.

And it’s funny how they lost that streak to Caleb Martin and Max Strus.

It wasn’t even Duncan Robinson or Tyler Herro going off — hell, it wasn’t even Kyle Lowry going off in the first half.

That’s what makes this win hella impressive. The Heat got their production, whether on offense or defense, from second-round picks, or undrafted players.

It was great seeing all these players step up when they needed to because that is what the team needs when dealing with injuries.

This was an impressive win, but at the same time, there were some issues and I don’t see this type of performance happening anytime soon — the Heat had 20 turnovers and 22–40 of their field goals were 3s.

They kinda got lucky with the hot shooting night.

Offensive Breakdown

This was an unusual performance by the Heat. I’ve mentioned this in other pieces — the Heat don’t win games when they attempt more 3s than 2s.

61.0% of their attempts were 3s and this was their first win of the season when they attempted 50% or more from deep. But it didn’t matter this game because the shots were falling.

Per Cleaning the Glass, their effective field goal was 66.2%, which is good for the 97th percentile.

There were three players responsible for that hot shooting — all coming in different points in the game.

A career night for Caleb Martin. He finished the game with a game-high 28 points with six triples. He was doing everything on the court and was a big reason why the Heat remained in the game.

He had 17 points in the first half — he was 5–6 from deep and no one else was in double digits.

But that was all in the first half.

After a cold start, Lowry did his thing where he exploded. In the third quarter, he finished with 16 points and four from downtown.

The Heat had their best quarter, scoring 39 points and Lowry going off was a huge momentum.

That leads to the fourth-quarter killer.

Here’s a thread of all the key shots from Max Strus in the fourth — I go through the plays and see how he got his shots.

The Heat basically were spamming this one play involving Strus and it worked to perfection. The Bucks had little to no adjustments being made to stop Strus from getting those shots.

There were, however, some negatives from the game.

Herro had a bad, bad game. His shot was off, had sloppy turnovers when driving, lazy passes, and also looked out of sync on some defensive possessions.

It happens. This is nothing to be concerned about but was something worth noting from the game.

Speaking of turnovers, the Heat again had a turnover percentage in their 20s — that’s not good and it’s not a good habit to have. That needs to be addressed.

Defensive Breakdown

Per Cleaning the Glass, the Heat had a 104.1 defensive rating (66th percentile), but it seemed better than that.

And do you know why it seemed better? Because Giannis only had 15 points.

We say this each game — how PJ Tucker’s impact is so big and doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, well this one had both.

You can make a case that he was the best player.

Per NBA, Giannis shot 3–9 with three turnovers. Tucker made life difficult for him and not only that, he did a great job at simply preventing him from getting the ball — can’t hurt you when you don’t get the ball.

After PnRs, he did a great job dropping and preventing a pass to a roll or just not allowing him to get the pass.

This was Giannis’ worst game so far this season — he shot 30%, the lowest this season. Just a random note, in his career, he is averaging the least amount of points against Miami than any other team.‍

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