Is it time to be worried about the Miami Heat's shooting regression?

Miami's 3-point shotmaking has seemingly regressed back to their regular season mean.

Mandatory Caption: Surya Fernandez/HHH

In a must-win Game 5 for the New York Knicks, with their backs against the wall, they earned a 112-103 win over the Miami Heat to force a Game 6 Friday inside Kaseya Center at 7:30 EST.

The Knicks got much-needed performances from their top three, spearheaded by Jalen Brunson, who tallied a game high 38 points, nine rebounds and seven assists on 12-of-22 shooting, playing the full 48 minutes alongside guard Quentin Grimes.

New York muscled its way to a plus-16 (50-34) on the glass after its discouraging Game 4 effort while also having one of its best shooting performances these playoffs, knocking down nearly half (18-40) of their shots from 10-plus feet.

But perhaps the biggest reason for Miami’s downfall was … well, its lack of shooting.

I discussed this before the series, but its 3-point shooting was bound to regress after it’s scorching hot series against the Bucks. The Heat shot 45.0 percent, nearly five percentage points better than any other NBA team, in their five games. It sported the second-most efficient offenses while topping the pack in effective field goal percentage and true-shooting percentage.

Its long range efficiency has slowly, but surely crashed back to Earth through five games against New York like a Redwood tree trunk plummeting to the ground.

A year removed from being the NBA’s most 3-point efficiency shooting squad, the Heat were the fourth-worst 3-point shooting team in the regular season and have canned only 31.2 percent of their 3-point attempts in the second round, the second-worst among the eight conference semifinalists.

In fact, the only team they’ve out-shot from deep has been the Knicks, who have converted on just 30.1 percent of their attempts.

That begs the question: Is it time to be concerned about Miami’s 3-point regression?

Miami only went 13-of-43 from distance in their Game 5 loss to New York on a steady diet of open looks — according to NBA.com tracking data, 36 of Miami’s 43 attempts were either considered open or wide open (meaning the closest defender was at least four feet from the shooter).

Of its 202 total 3-point attempts this series, 148 of them have been considered open or wide open, converting them at a 35.1 percent clip. It’s a much smaller sample, but it’s eerily mirroring its 35.6 percent mark in the regular season that ranked No. 24 leaguewide and north of one percentage point worse than league average (36.8 percent). Against Milwaukee, that wasn’t the case, knocking down 43.3 percent (58-134) of open or wide open 3-pointers.

Here’s how it’s shot game-by-game on open or wide open 3-point attempts, per NBA.com:

• Game 1 v. Bucks: 57.1 percent (12-21)

• Game 2: 41.4 percent (12-29)

• Game 3: 48.1 percent (13-27)

• Game 4: 36.0 percent (9-25)

• Game 5: 37.5 percent (12-32)

• Game 1 v. Knicks: 31.0 percent (9-29)

• Game 2: 40.0 percent (14-35)

• Game 3: 33.3 percent (6-18)

• Game 4: 33.3 percent (10-30)

• Game 5: 36.1 percent (13-36)

In total, the Heat has not made at least 36 percent of their 3-pointers once this series while shooting at least 40 percent from deep all but one game against Milwaukee.

Each one of their go-to shooters — Kyle Lowry, Caleb Martin, Kevin Love, Max Strus and Duncan Robinson — have come off the burner, while a healthy diet of its offense has been predicated on their shotmaking outside of Bam Adebayo or Jimmy Butler. It doesn’t help when they’re without their best shooter, Tyler Herro, who broke his hand in the playoff-opener against Milwaukee.

You could attribute it to the matchup: New York does a much better job packing the paint with second, third and fourth defenders on drives, prompting more open spot up 3-point attempts.

Milwaukee’s standard deep-drop made it easier for Miami to generate open pull-up-and-off-screen 3-pointers, though their efficiency was still way beyond what anyone expected, especially after its previous 84-game sample.

One could wonder how the Heat’s offense looks in Game 6 Friday if shots don’t continue to fall; each of their aforementioned shooters — like most — shoot better at home than on the road, but the Knicks will likely force Miami to beat them from distance whenever the ball in Butler’s hands.

It’s a make or miss league. Shot-making can be fluky on a night-to-night basis, so if that says anything, I think it would be justified to be slightly concerned if Miami can’t Heat up (pun intended) in yet another closeout game Friday.