Miami drops game 3 at home, Nuggets win 109-94

The Heat looked pretty good in the first half, but fell apart in the second half on both ends of the court.

The Miami Heat lose game 3 in front of their home fans with a final score of 109-94. After bouncing back in game 2 with a huge road win, the team is right back in that same position and trail the Denver Nuggets in the series 2-1.

The Nuggets made their adjustments, and that was to get Jamal Murray more involved offensively.

Murray had a triple double with 34, 10 and 10 and got to all his spots. He was attacking with the pick and roll and got to the paint at ease. The craziest part is his teammate Nikola Jokic also had a triple double with 32 points, an ABSURD 21 rebounds, and 10 assists. That duo just couldn’t be handled tonight.

Jokic was an absolute menace and a machine, showing that soft touch around the rim and even making tough jumpers as well.

For Miami, Jimmy Butler led the way with 28 points but wasn’t quite as efficient as he should’ve been, going 11/24 from the field.

Bam Adebayo had an impressive double double with 22 points and 17 rebounds, but it wasn’t enough.

The Nuggets shot 51% from the field as a team compared to Miami’s 37%. They also dominated the glass on the Heat with a 58-33 advantage.

Denver had 13 offensive rebounds to the Heat’s 10. If you are Miami, there is no way that many rebounds can be allowed and having that much of a difference in that category on an NBA Finals stage.

They need to get more physical and aggressive and play bigger. The concerning thing is this rebounding problem even happened with Kevin Love rounding the starting 5 as the PF over a much smaller Caleb Martin.

The Cody Zeller minutes is a whole different story as well; just straight up painful.

It was a tail of two halves for the Heat, who came out looking good and kept the game close and competitive in the first half.

Following halftime though, the effort wasn’t there and they were flat offensively. Max Strus had yet another night he would like to forget, going 1/7 from the field.

Gabe Vincent, who was in foul trouble right out of the gate after 3 straight awful calls by the refs, shot just 2/10. It was his first rough night in these Finals.

There were no true standout performances from any of Miami’s supporting cast tonight; a game where the team really missed the extra star power from injured Tyler Herro.

Herro hopes to return at some point in this series, but just wasn’t there yet to be able to suit up for tonight.

The Heat have lost 3 straight games in their home arena, and a group that was once a great home team is now struggling to get it done on their own turf.

There is no way the Heat can allow Denver to take a commanding 3-1 lead and take both games on the road in South Beach. Miami has come way too far to allow it to go down like that at this point in the season.

They will have a chance to make some adjustments (especially defensively) yet again and bounce back for a must-win game 4 Friday night to tie this series back up.