Since the start of the New Year, the Miami Heat have been the NBA’s worst team in the third quarter. (Mandatory Credit: Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
The Miami Heat were at the wrong end of another blown double-digit lead on Friday night, this time to the Boston Celtics.
It wasn’t a good night offensively for either team. But Miami managed to blow a 21-point lead, a league-leading 31st double-digit deficit blown since the start of 2024-25.
The biggest reason for it is their play in the third quarter — which Heat fans online have famously dubbed the “turd” quarter — a trend that has frequently plagued this team over the last several years.
The turd quarter is, once again, not being kind to the Miami Heat:
For the most part, Miami closed games well at the start of the season. Through their first 33 games, the Heat owned the 13th-best NET Rating in the second half (plus-1.5). But that has since cratered to minus-12.0 (29th) since the turn of the calendar, including a league-worst minus-18.6 NET in the third quarter.
Over that span, the Heat sport a league-worst 106.1 offensive rating in the second half. They also have the worst effective field goal percentage, true-shooting percentage and the eighth-worst turnover rate as well.
The Celtics outscored the Heat 36-15 in the third quarter. Miami shot just 5-of-19 from the floor and 2-of-12 from 3-point range. Conversely, Boston went 13-of-20, including 5-of-7 from deep, led by Payton Pritchard, newly-acquired Nikola Vucevic and Derrick White.
“I don’t know,” Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said regarding the third-quarter woes. “We’ve tried everything. It was a little bit chaotic with Pelle going out right before we started the half, then Norm had to come out a little bit. But that’s not an excuse. It really started with that free-throw line blockout.
“That’s the point I’ve been making to the team. You got to check all the boxes first — the easy things. There’s a lot of hard things in this league, but we didn’t block out on a free throw. And we know that our level of urgency and attention to detail and everything coming out of the third quarter — that’s what we’re trying to conquer.
“We played so hard and really well in that first half. And then we had a mental glitch on the free throw line. And that just kind of led to some other breakdowns.”
Miami has been outscored in the third quarter in nine of their last 11 games, including by 14-plus thrice over the last seven games.
This isn’t a new issue. If Spoelstra, one of the league’s best coaches, has a fatal flaw, one of the biggest is the third quarter. Though while this isn’t a new issue, at some point, Spoelstra and Co. will have to figure out a solution — whether that’s a new substitution pattern, being quicker to adjust, etc.
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