Reeling Miami Heat willing to go back to defensive roots

MIAMI — As Monday turned to Tuesday, insightful ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky posted to his social media, “Thought Miami had become a different team.”

He was talking about the Miami Dolphins.

He might as well have been talking about the Miami Heat.

Because while the Dolphins remained true to their quarter-century, no-playoff-hope selves with their Monday Night Football road loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Heat back in South Florida almost simultaneously were reverting to their previous can’t-score selves.

In falling for the fifth consecutive time, the Heat for the first time this season failed to score 100 in their 106-96 loss to the Toronto Raptors at Kaseya Center.

As yet another team cut off the Heat’s driving angles, packed the paint, dared Erik Spoelstra’s team to beat them over the top, the Heat’s new-look offense took on an all-too-familiar old-look appearance.

As did the commentary that followed.

“It’s that defensive end I’m really worried about,” center Bam Adebayo said. “Even if we don’t score 140 and we score 96, we can still win.”

Except that’s not how today’s how-high-can-you-go NBA works, where triple-figures not only is the bare minimum but at times barely good enough through three quarters.

The scoring has stalled.

The offensive has become offensive.

The point now puny.

“Earlier in the season,” guard Norman Powell said, “we were able to get whatever we wanted because they didn’t know our offense, our system. We were doing a good job moving the ball, trusting one another, finding open good looks.

“Right now, I think this offense is slow because they’re, one, denying us, and we don’t have as much ball movement and body movement that we need to have. Like I said, we find it throughout the course of games and it’s good for a couple of minutes. Then when it gets a little tough, we kind of take on the role of trying to do it ourselves rather than continuing to work the game.”

As if numbers are needed to quantify the obvious, during the five-game losing streak, the Heat’s previous league-leading pace is down to eighth in the NBA over that span, with their offensive rating a league-worst 30th over that span.

League. Worst.

From thrill ride to ball of confusion.

And, with that, talking transitioning from new identity to previous identity.

“I’m really confident Coach won’t rest, the coaching staff won’t rest until we get this right,” Powell said. “We’re not going to quit. We go through tough times. We’re built on it, they’re built on it. But it’s going to be on us, it’s going to be on the guys stepping on the floor and having that identity of who we’re going to be every single night. And it’s going to have to start on the defensive end.

“Scoring 140 is great. I told the guys after the game, scoring 140 and everybody being proud of what our offense is and what it looks like and how different it is from previous years and things like that is great at the beginning of the season. But who are we going to be when we have nights like this, consecutive nights like this? And it’s going to be a team that has to hold their hats on the defensive end, whether shots are going in, whether you’re getting your looks, whether you’re getting your average. Whatever it is, we have to have an identity defensively, collectively.”

Monday night, it was the Heat again going without the offensive punch of Tyler Herro (toe) and the energizing of Pelle Larsson (ankle), before in the opening period losing Nikola Jovic (elbow).

But Powell said it is not about any one player, just as it wasn’t when the Heat at the start of the season were unexpectedly racing to the top of the standings.

“It’s not one person that has to be better. It’s all of us,” Powell said. “All of us have to be better, all of us have to sacrifice, and it’s going to have to be sacrifice on the defensive end and doing what it takes to get stops and get our offense and just everything back clicking and flowing.

“But we’ve got to be a defensive-first team. I think we shifted a little bit because our offense was so great. We thought, ‘Well, we can just come in and score and everybody’s going to get their shots, and it’s going to be great.’ But teams are adjusting, so now we have to really adjust. It’s still early. We’ve still got time, but the identity of who we have to be is going to be a defensive Miami Heat team.”

So two months of pop-a-shot productivity, and now, a reality check, for those, in any sport, who, “Thought Miami had become a different team.”

“Hey,” Spoelstra said, as if conjuring his Mike McDaniel, “seasons get like this and you just have to stay together and get back to work.”