Turnover-prone Heat squander chance to get 'greedy' in Game 2
TORONTO — Dwyane Wade has enough playoff experience over more than a dozen years in the league to know how and when to proceed with caution in a postgame interview setting.
So Wade made sure to give the Toronto Raptors their proper amount of credit.
“They won the game in a sense,” Wade said as he assessed the Heat’s 96-92 overtime playoff loss to the Raptors in Game 2 on Thursday. “They took the game from us.”
What the Raptors also did more than anything was take advantage of Miami’s generosity. The Heat headed out of the Air Canada Centre to board their flight back to Miami in Friday morning’s wee hours knowing deep down they probably should have been carrying a 2-0 Eastern Conference semifinal series lead through customs.
Instead, the Heat had to settle for a 1-1 split after committing 41 turnovers over two games that have directly accounted for 46 of the 192 points the Raptors have scored so far in the series. After surviving 20 miscues that cost them 22 points in a 102-96 overtime victory in Game 1, the Heat gave away 24 points off 22 turnovers in Thursday’s loss to ensure a return trip to Canada next week for Game 5.
The ball-handling problems aren’t unique to this second-round series. Since taking a 2-0 series lead against the Charlotte Hornets in the first round, Miami has committed 109 turnovers in its past seven playoff games. From a bigger-picture perspective, the Heat should be encouraged for winning one of the first two games in Toronto to swing home-court advantage in their favor as the lower-seeded team.
But if their costly trend continues, the Heat would put themselves in position to hand control of the series right back to the Raptors, whose only semblance of offensive rhythm has been generated by Miami’s mistakes. Case in point: Toronto scored 11 of their 12 points in transition off Heat turnovers. Those bad habits started early in Game 2 for the Heat, who coughed up the basketball 11 times in the first quarter, which marked the most turnovers they’ve had in any quarter this season.
“Spotting a good team like this roughly 20 extra possessions — however they got them — that’s tough to overcome,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Those are a lot of possessions to give up in the postseason. They’re a good, disruptive team. They protect the paint, but also have some quickness [on the perimeter]. So we have to make the adjustment, and that is what’s required right now.”
The first step in that process, Spoelstra said, is to improve his team’s offensive spacing. The next process requires moving the ball to secondary options. Through two games against Toronto, the Heat’s offense has featured limited ball movement beyond the initial playmaking option. Miami has assisted on only 26 of their 79 made field goals in the series, which is well below the rate of its season average.
What that means essentially is the ball is sticking and others aren’t involved until late in the shot clock. In Game 1, the Heat were fortunate and shot 11-of-20 from the field in the final six seconds of the shot clock on a night Wade, Goran Dragic and Joe Johnson dominated the ball and combined for 66 of 102 points. In Game 2 on Thursday, Miami missed 14 of their 20 attempts in late shot-clock situations.
Yet, the Heat still managed to hold a seven-point lead midway through the fourth quarter.
“We had some cushion there in the fourth quarter, and for whatever reason we just kind of stopped executing offensively and defensively,” said Johnson, who downplayed the impact of the early turnovers. “That hurt us, but it wasn’t what cost us the game. We got back in the game, had control of the game. So it’s just late-game situations for us, executing, rebounding and defending.”
Wade, Dragic and center Hassan Whiteside have combined for 19 of the Heat’s 41 turnovers in the series. Much of Miami’s offense is predicated on running actions through Dragic or Wade and often includes getting the ball inside to Whiteside for looks inside the paint. At times, the Raptors have been disruptive, with the length and quickness of DeMar DeRozan, DeMarre Carroll, Kyle Lowry and Jonas Valanciunas accounting for 13 of Toronto’s 15 steals on Thursday. But the Heat also have been sloppy.
“Some of those were silly, silly turnovers,” Dragic said. “Maybe we’re not focused enough. If we eliminate those turnovers, we would have had at least five possessions more, and if you score on half of those possessions, it’s six or seven points. We feel like we should have won this one, so it’s a little bit of a bad taste in our mouths. It’s good we won one … but we should have won both.”
Whiteside also said the Heat wanted to be greedy and take both games in Toronto. But if nothing else, this has been a give-and-take series for the Heat. Because they’re giving up too many turnovers, they were unable to take a step to move within two wins of reaching the Eastern Conference finals.
“We had an opportunity to win — that’s all you want on the road,” Wade said. “They blitzed us early, like we knew they would with the energy in the building, which you’d expect from a team down 1-0 at home. But we fought back. In a sense, we feel we gave this one up. We need to play better at home.”
The solution is simple for the Heat as they look to build on what they’ve gained in Toronto.
Protecting home court now in Miami must start with protecting the basketball.
