Miami Heat vs Minnesota Timberwolves Game Breakdown #19

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

The Heat simply can’t beat the Minnesota Timberwolves.

That makes sense seeing as the matchup against the Heat is the finals for the Wolves, which is kinda sad.

I’m not overreacting to this loss. Sometimes good teams lose to bad teams and that will happen and it’s fine unless your expectation was to go 82–0.

With that being said, we can still criticize the game itself and not be happy with the result because the team did play badly.

Another lead blown and another fourth-quarter collapse, which is a problem that will have to be addressed as the season goes on.

There was simply no energy from any player on both ends — they forgot how to box out, defend, and get to the line.

There is still some stuff to address and breakdown from this game — Duncan Robinson attempting 15 3s, effort on defense, Jimmy Butler not attempting any shots in the fourth, and Bam Adebayo’s playmaking.

Offensive Breakdown

This was the second game in the season where the Heat have attempted more 3s than 2s and when they settle for too many 3s, they lose.

In the first quarter, they were lucky to have Bam Adebayo and Butler attack the rim and try to get to the line. Aside from the two, no one else made a bucket inside.

Outside of them, there wasn’t anyone else that could have got to the rim — Heat only scored 28 points in the paint.

Because of that, the Heat relied on a lot of shooting, mainly from Robinson — he had 35% of the team’s total 3pt attempts.

See what happens when players get to the paint! It opens up that drive-and-kick and because of that, the team was able to generate many open shots for Robinson.

This was also why they were able to head into the second half with an eight-point lead — they made six 3s.

Staying on Robinson, he did more than just shoot 3s. And with him struggling on offense, but still having that gravity to draw defenders made me think he should be involved in different actions that won’t result in him taking the shot.

Yes. This is a 35-second clip of possessions where Robinson had impressed me.

He drove on poor closeouts and good things happened when he attacked the rim. In one of those clips, he got into the paint and took that mid-range shot — yes, he did hesitate, which was annoying to see.

In another play, he draw the low man from the paint and found an easy pocket pass to Adebayo. Or he even attacked the paint, fake out the defense and kick it for a 3. Though, one of those kicks was to Butler.

Despite shooting almost the same percentage as Gabe Vincent, he still has the defense overplaying him. We saw against Detroit what he can do when the defense overplays him off-ball — he back cuts or curls in.

In this game, however, we saw more decisions from him with the ball in his hands. In the fourth clip, he gets a handoff from Adebayo and the two defenders stay with him. And what does he do? Makes a snap-decision for a pocket pass for an and-one from Adebayo.

Robinson is a hell of a passer and to me, has great reads and makes them damn quick. We’ve seen the dribble hand-offs with him and Butler that all resulted in open shots — maybe we need more of that.

Vincent also impressed me with this game, as he finished with 14 points, 3 rebounds, and 2 assists, with 4 triples.

I do love that his shots have been falling recently, but this is what the team needs more of:

The Heat needs more players to attack the rim — they are 28th in attempts in the restricted area and 29th in drives per game.

What’s worrying is Vincent is fifth in drives per game on the team and is only attempting one field goal attempt less than Kyle Lowry.

Look what happens when players drive. It collapses the defense and opens up shooters. And if they don’t help on shooters, it’s a bucket at the rim.

Finally, before we get to the negatives, let’s touch on Adebayo’s playmaking.

Okay, let’s get to the bad things.

In the second half, the Heat scored 20 points in the third and 19 points in the fourth.

The Heat went completely away from finishing at the rim — they had only two attempts.

And because of that, they yet again relied on jump-shots to bail them out. Unfortunately, the shots weren’t falling.

A couple of 3s in transition, rushed shots, and tough shots and now you find yourself without a field goal made in over six minutes.

It also didn’t help to have your best tough-shot maker having an off-night.

Then, there was the fourth quarter. That was a pain to watch — if I didn’t have to do these breakdowns, I wouldn’t want to watch the fourth at all.

Eight turnovers, no shots from Butler, one field goal made in the last six minutes, again.

The turnovers were the worst one mainly because it was followed by the worst transition defense that led to momentum 3s.

It was yet again bad decision-making by the stars in the fourth.

Finally, there shouldn’t be any time ever where Butler is just doing cardio in the fourth. Get your best player some touches!

Defensive Breakdown

This was a poor effort from everyone.

There was no energy, no fire, no nothing on the defensive end. Per Cleaning the Glass, they had their defensive rating was in the 50th percentile, but that was because the Wolves couldn’t hit shots either.

Everything was off to a rough start — the Wolves had 15 offensive rebounds, 7 in the first quarter. You can just feel the Heat weren’t in the game.

As always there were problems with switching — either switching too much or being late on those switches.

When it came to switching too much, there were three consecutive possessions with a mismatch on Karl-Anthony Towns. The Heat got lucky that he was in foul trouble for most of the game.

Or there was the common issue of someone being in the wrong place or forgetting to switch and that all led to open 3s. Most of that was also a late contest on a switch.

But it wasn’t just team defense that was the problem.

Even Butler, who you don’t see many defensive breakdowns from him, was also slow on the defensive end.

And you almost definitely don’t see a DPOY candidate get blown by like this

Maybe it was tired legs from a back-to-back.‍

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