MIAMI \u2014 Observations and other notes of interest from Sunday night\u2019s 125-106 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans:<\/p>\n
\u2013 We saw it against the Pacers a couple of weeks back.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And again this time against the Pelicans.<\/p>\n
\u2013 An opponent throwing the ball away with reckless abandon, this time 25 turnovers.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Yes, some credit to the Heat for forcing the mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u2013 But also a case of conference-worst team being, well \u2026 bad.<\/p>\n
\u2013 As in the Pacers being the worst in the East.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And the Pelicans worst in the West.<\/p>\n
\u2013 The irony is both shot the ball well against the Heat when maintaining possession.<\/p>\n
\u2013 As rare as that was.<\/p>\n
\u2013 So perspective is needed in these.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Because this is not even play-in level competition.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Let alone what the Heat would have to face in the real postseason.<\/p>\n
\u2013 What you do is take victories like this and move on.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Perhaps with a token of gratitude for the opposition being so giving.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Now do it Tuesday in Minnesota and it would come with meaning.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Still, it does make it five victories in the last six.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Tyler Herro in uniform but not considered ready to return, the Heat again opened with a lineup of Norman Powell, Andrew Wiggins, Bam Adebayo, Kel\u2019el Ware and Davion Mitchell.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Powell sizzled from the arc.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Which basically was all that was needed in this one.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Jaime Jaquez Jr. out, the first two substitutes off the bench were Pelle Larsson and Nikola Jovic, who entered together.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Dru Smith followed.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Kasparas Jakucionis making it nine deep.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Then, in a twist, two-way player Myron Gardner entered off the Heat bench, ahead of Simone Fontecchio.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With a four-game trip up next, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra went in stressing the importance of Sunday night.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cWe know how important this game is before we go on the road,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Mission accomplished.<\/p>\n
\u2013 He also said no need to look back to Saturday night\u2019s home loss to the Timberwolves.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cWe want to just put that game behind us from last night and just focus on this game and have that similar type of compete level,\u201d he said, \u201cand then bring a more efficient game on both sides of the court, where we\u2019re getting to our identity more consistently, not letting teams to take us out of that identity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 With Jaquez (ankle) out, Spoelstra said it was beneficial to have Pelle Larsson (ankle) back.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cHe can do some of it,\u201d Spoelstra said of Larsson as Jaquez. \u201cHe does it in a different way, but pace can also take care of some of that. It\u2019ll have to be in a lot of different other buckets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Which Larsson did, in a solid two-way effort.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Pelicans coach James Borrego became the latest to praise the Heat\u2019s pace.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u201cThe way they get it out, the pace, make or miss, this is as fast as I\u2019ve seen them,\u201d he said. \u201cSo to their credit, they\u2019ve done a heck of a job doing it. They do it very well, they trust it, they get the ball to the floor, they put pressure on you constantly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2013 Borrego added. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of the philosophy I\u2019ve shared over the years offensively \u2013 just keep as much pressure on the defense for as long as possible. And they\u2019re doing that, they do it with the drive, the pace, the ball movement.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Heat then launched 57 shots in their 70-point first half.<\/p>\n
\u2013 And kept going from there.<\/p>\n
\u2013 It was the 100th career regular-season appearance for Ware.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Ware extended his career-best run of games with multiple offensive rebounds to 17.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Along the way, Jovic reached his 500th career rebound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Observations and other notes of interest from Sunday night\u2019s 125-106 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":517534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3796],"tags":[7,165,189,3880,6,478,470,4073,4072,675,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-517533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-latest-headlines","10":"tag-miami-heat","11":"tag-miami-heat-blog","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-new-orleans","14":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","15":"tag-neworleans","16":"tag-neworleanspelicans","17":"tag-pelicans","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115840859804369095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/517534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}