Heat lose Play-In to Hawks 116-105, face win or go home next game

Miami got out-rebounded 68-50, allowing 22 offensive rebounds and 26 second-chance points.

The Miami Heat drop their 7 vs 8 seed Play-In matchup to the Atlanta Hawks, 116-105. Miami dug themselves into a hole early, going down by as many as 24 points in the first half of the game. Granted, they did fight back and tried to make a run out of it, but it was simply just too deep to get out of. The Heat had a 2-0 lead at the very start of the game, and weren’t able to get one single lead again after that.

It was arguably one of the worst losses this season, as the players just made things way harder for themselves, as they most often do.

Since Miami lost tonight, they are now in a win or go home setting in front of their home crowd for Friday night’s last Play-In game against either the Chicago Bulls or Toronto Raptors. The Heat are 1-6 against those two teams combined this season. It doesn’t get any better from then on either, as just 2 days later the winner of the last Play-In game is stuck with the start of a 7 game series against the 1 seeded Milwaukee Bucks.

It was just a rough game overall, the Heat looked lethargic and out of it for most of the first half. The Hawks effort was clearly more noticeable than the Heat as the story of the night was Atlanta’s rebounding dominance. They out-rebounded and outplayed this veteran Heat team on their home floor. Prior to this game, Miami won 8 of the last 9 home meetings against the Hawks.

Miami lost in the rebounding department 68-50, which led to Atlanta getting much more field goal attempts.

Kyle Lowry and Tyler Herro were impressive. The backcourt duo combined for 59 points, including 33 from Lowry and 26 from Herro. Lowry almost single handedly kept Miami in this game. He helped calm the storm in the first half and led the Heat to a 11-0 run at one point to cut it to a reasonable 15 point deficit at the half.

He didn’t slow down in the last 2 quarters either, the 3 ball was falling and at points he looked like the only player trying and hustling.

Herro was good too, he shot the ball efficiently and at a nice sized clip. He also was there for the team to get a bucket when needed, especially in the 3rd quarter when he started to heat up.

Butler added 21 points and 9 assists, but struggled to get into a rhythm the whole night. Bam Adebayo only had 12 points and 9 rebounds on 5/12 shooting. Numbers like that is just not enough to get the job done when the Hawks have a big man in Clint Cappela to snag 20+ boards for the game.

Besides Lowry, Herro, Jimmy & Bam, the team scored a total of 13 points. The Heat shot 4/12 at the rim offensively, to go along with 23-48 shooting in the paint. They also were only 11-34 from 3 point range as a team. It makes fans wonder if Erik Spoelstra playing Kevin Love more could have made more of a difference, who was brought in to make three’s and snag rebounds after all.

This is a Miami squad that has proved time and time again this season that nothing in this league is easy. However, it’s time to come back with some more energy to try to sneak into this playoff picture as the 8th seed.

See you again in South Beach Friday night (unfortunately) Heat fans.