Heat enters ‘important week’ after 1-3 start to season with Jimmy Butler on injury report
The first week of the NBA season didn’t go well for the Miami Heat. That makes the second week of the schedule that much more important.
Following a winless three-game trip, the Heat returned to Miami with a 1-3 record to begin a three game homestand on Wednesday against the Brooklyn Nets (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun). The Heat also began last season at 1-3 but is trying to avoid its worst five-game start since opening the 2007-08 season at 0-5.
“This is an important week for us coming up at home,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said following Monday night’s 122-114 road loss to the Milwaukee Bucks to cap an 0-3 trip. “We have a lot of work to do. We’ve had a lot of moving parts early on in the season. That’s not an excuse. We need to just have a productive week. We have three games at home and we have some time with shootarounds, practices. We just need to move the needle this week.”
Heat unveils new ‘Culture’ uniform: ‘Stating our identity and putting it on our chest’
The Heat enters the homestand — which includes games against the Nets on Wednesday, Washington Wizards on Friday and Los Angeles Lakers on Monday — among one of the worst teams in the NBA through the very small sample size of one week. Miami entered Tuesday with the league’s 21st-ranked offensive rating and 20th-ranked defensive rating.
The Heat is one of four teams through Monday’s slate of games with both an offensive rating and defensive rating ranked 20th or worse in the NBA. The San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and Portland Trail Blazers are the others.
“I think it’s going to be very important for us to get home and try to get some wins put together,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said. “We got to start with one, first and foremost. I think it’s an opportunity for us to be home, get some practice time in. Everybody gets the comforts of being back in the routine and rhythm of the NBA season. We traveled a lot. Get home, get some rest, recovery and go out there and feed off our home crowd’s energy. That will help us a little bit.”
Getting players back from injury would also help the Heat.
The Heat has missed multiple rotation players in each of its first four games of the season. In Monday’s loss to the Bucks, the Heat was without starting center Bam Adebayo (left hip contusion) and two players who are expected to be key components of the bench rotation in Haywood Highsmith (left knee sprain) and Caleb Martin (left knee tendinosis).
The Heat could again be missing multiple rotation players on Wednesday against the Nets.
Heat star Jimmy Butler, who is off to a rough 13 of 40 (32.5 percent) shooting start this season and did not play in the fourth quarter of Monday’s loss to the Bucks, is listed as questionable for Wednesday’s contest against the Nets because of right knee tendinitis. This is the same knee that has given Butler issues in recent seasons.
Also, the Heat listed Adebayo as probable with his hip injury, Highsmith as questionable with his knee injury, and ruled out Martin for the fourth straight game.
“It’s next-man-up mentality. We know that,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said. “But having guys out, not really having much consistency in the rotation. That’s part of the NBA, but you would love to get some stability, especially on the road, early on. We have a lot of road games to start the season, so we just want to get guys back as we can.”
The Heat got guard Josh Richardson back in Monday’s loss to the Bucks. Richardson, who missed the first three games of the season with a foot injury, finished his season debut with six points on 3-of-7 shooting from the field, three rebounds and two assists while posting a plus/minus of plus four in 23 minutes off the bench.
“It’s part of our NBA, guys are always going to be injured,” Lowry said. “There’s always going to be injury bugs. But getting a guy like J-Rich back and getting his legs under him gives us another guy that can handle the ball with defensive prowess. We just got to get everybody back.”
The Heat’s leading trio of Adebayo, Butler and Herro have all been available for just two of the first four games of the season. One of those games was a one-point win over the Detroit Pistons in the opener and the other was a competitive eight-point loss to the Celtics in Boston on Friday.
“We have a lot of guys who are going to be able to help that are getting back to health,” Spoelstra said. “If there’s one silver lining, it’s that we have guys getting a lot healthier. J-Rich is the first one. Caleb is starting to feel better, H [Highsmith] has made tremendous progress while we were away. He’s going to be back sooner than later. So all of these things are good things.
“Our depth is one of our strengths of our team and our versatility with that depth. You just get the sense that guys are on their way back. Even Bam, I don’t necessarily know what the next 48 hours will feel like. But we almost had to hold him back. He tried to go through the shootaround and then tried to warm up. The mobility was nowhere near where it needed to be. But he did a ton of treatment. He’s going to do probably 10 hours of treatment [Tuesday] and we’ll see how he feels on Wednesday.”
Following this three-game homestand, the Heat will begin a grueling 10-game stretch that includes nine road games. The Heat knows it must take advantage of home-court advantage this week before beginning that long span away from Miami.
“It’s important,” Richardson said of the week ahead. “Sitting 1-3, we’re not where we want to be at. But we got to go get it. We have a few games at home where we can play in front of our home crowd and play off their energy. So hopefully we can capitalize.”
▪ The Nets also enter Wednesday’s game in Miami with a short-handed roster.
Brooklyn ruled out starting center Nic Claxton (sprained left ankle) and starting forward Cameron Johnson (strained left calf). In addition, developmental forward Noah Clowney and developmental guard Dariq Whitehead are playing in the G League.
The Nets also listed starting guard Spencer Dinwiddie (sprained left ankle) as doubtful. Reserve guard Dennis Smith Jr. (left hip contusion) is doubtful, too.
