[ad_1]
Bam Adebayo sees himself as a positive person; an energy supplier for the Miami Heat. This showed in two recent games against the Nets, as he dropped 41 points in Saturday’s game and recorded a double-double on Monday. But even his usual optimism or the black mask he wears on Zoom calls couldn’t hide his frustration after both efforts ended in losses.
“We’re at the bottom of the east right now, it doesn’t seem right to be there,” Adebayo said Monday night. “We’re just down there, man.” It’s no excuse, but I think we could have won this game.
The Heat are currently 6-11, and although they are technically only two games on the no. 8 seeds in the East, they have the third worst record of the conference. After Wednesday night’s 109-82 loss to the Nuggets, Miami has lost four straight games and seven of its last nine.
With famed Heat culture emphasizing a ‘no excuse’ mindset, it’s impossible to ignore the dire situation the team found themselves in over the past month. The Heat’s fights aren’t just a symptom of poor basketball, but rather the fact that a handful of their players – including star forward Jimmy Butler – have been off the field for extended periods of time.
“It’s very nice to say, ‘We have stayed true to the [Nets], “But I don’t want to hear that,” Goran Dragic said. “It’s good to have that courage… sometimes you win with that courage, but you have to perform.
Butler and off-season bill Avery Bradley had both been out since January 9 due to NBA COVID-19 protocols, although Bradley returned to the ground on Wednesday night. Mo Harkless missed two games this month under the same health and safety restrictions. Adebayo himself missed two games due to contact tracing. Both were losses; and in one of those contests, the Heat only had the minimum of eight available players required to play the game. (Miami has only had one postponed game so far this season, a Jan.9 game against the Celtics.) That would be the worst-case scenario for any team. But for a Heat group that just won an impressive final last season, it’s the opposite of what they expected. Of course, there was a feeling that regression could come this season, but it was something beyond prediction or control, and it also introduced a new level of concern for the health of the players.
“The most important thing is that we want to be safe, first and foremost,” said Duncan Robinson after the Heat played with just eight players against the Sixers on Jan. 12. “It’s certainly frustrating, but everyone goes through it. Saying “Why us” probably doesn’t help anyone either. ”
Seventeen games in the 2021 regular season, the things that supported the Heat in last season’s bubble – culture, cohesion and chemistry – are exactly what they couldn’t establish. And Miami is not the only team to go through this struggle.
Tim Hardaway knew something was wrong. After beating the Nuggets in overtime on Jan. 7, the mood on the Mavericks’ flight to Dallas wasn’t as positive as it normally would have been. The plane was missing three players – Josh Richardson, Dorian Finney-Smith and Jalen Brunson – who all had to stay in Denver to follow league health and safety protocols.
“It was kinda suck,” Hardaway said after a win over the Magic on Jan. 9. “But at the moment, that’s the nature of our business.”
While expectations for the Heat have been somewhat frozen in the East, perhaps no team in the Western Conference has had a more difficult time than Dallas. The Mavericks have also had only one game postponed so far this season, but they have had five important players – Richardson, Finney-Smith, Brunson, Maxi Kleber and Dwight Powell – for most of the month (Richardson , Powell, and Finney-Smith returned for Wednesday night’s game). While Luka Doncic still plays at an elite level and will likely be an MVP contender, the Mavs are 8-10 below par, have lost three in a row and are sitting outside the West’s top eight.
The reality of what they’re going through is taking its toll on the pitch – Dallas has the league’s 16th offense after having the best last season – and it’s affected the team’s overall demeanor.
“I think we look like a team that isn’t motivated,” said Boban Marjanovic after the Mavs lost to a Rockets side without Harden last weekend. It was their third game in four days.
League health protocols have had an effect on player availability for this season’s games, but also on teams’ routines between competitions. As head coach Rick Carlisle pointed out before Dallas faced the Magic on Jan.9, the Mavs were unable to have a shoot, a daily game for each team, due to morning COVID testing and waiting time. Teams had to make many similar adjustments on-site – for example, Dallas stayed in Tampa overnight after playing the Raptors last week to avoid flying to their next game venue (Indiana) in the wee hours of the morning. .
“Schedules and schedules can be overwhelming and can be changed dramatically in a very short period of time,” Carlisle said after the Denver game. “We all have to understand that it’s part of life in the NBA this year.”
The Heat and Mavericks are still more than likely to make the playoffs this year (Five thirty-eight gives Miami a 73 percent chance and Dallas an 88 percent chance). But in a season shortened by 72 games, every game carries more weight. What happens now may be a long-forgotten story as the playoffs begin, but right now the struggles of the Mavericks and Heat are real, and the losses they rack up could affect the build-up process. chemistry that is essential for any team with aspirations to make a deep playoff run.
While every aspect of the NBA’s return to play this season has been collectively negotiated and agreed upon between the players and the league, restrictions have tightened and the league has become more proactive as the season progresses. Teams like the Wizards and Grizzlies have been forced to postpone multiple games, either because they had too many players in COVID protocols at the same time, or because the NBA tried to limit the spread of the virus within the teams. And while others, like Heat and Mavs, have mostly been able to keep going, their exhausted rosters have pushed available players to the limit. This left players vulnerable not only to losses, but also to injuries and having to adapt to new circumstances on the fly.
“I told the team that they were like a Navy SEAL group,” said coach Erik Spoelstra after the Heat’s second loss to the Nets. “Just drop them off in town, whatever the circumstances, the guys are going to go out there and do a job.”
These long absences of players forced many bench end players into the game and forced them to take on outsized roles. Gabe Vincent of the Heat, an undrafted player on a two-way contract, averages 22 minutes per game and played two 20-point games against the Sixers two weeks ago after playing just one other game before this season. Miami second-year forward KZ Okpala had to keep James Harden and Kevin Durant in spurts. And from his hotel room in Denver, where he had to quarantine himself for 14 days, Finney-Smith watched Josh Green assume part of his role and wished he could be there to tell the rookie how to defend a certain player or read covers.
It is not lost on anyone that these players enter the game, as others are physically affected by a virus that has the potential to impact the long-term health of players, as well as the health of players. their families. Finney-Smith said her symptoms were akin to a very bad cold, but the mental challenges of quarantine proved even more difficult.
“Usually when you’re injured or something, you could be with the team and the coach, but sitting in a hotel, you just feel a little bit useless,” Finney-Smith said. “My girlfriend is pregnant, so knowing that I wasn’t bringing the coronavirus home was kind of my way of staying positive.
Even after players have completed their time in league health and safety protocols, there is a bit of a re-entry process. Brunson, who quarantined for seven days in Denver earlier this month, returned to the active Mav list last week. And as Carlisle described him as having fresh legs, Brunson felt the shock in his system.
“I don’t recommend taking 10 days off to play a game,” he said after playing 27 minutes against the Raptors last week. Brunson was able to have a bike in his hotel room and made sure to get to the gym as soon as he could, even though he couldn’t play games yet. “Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”
The Heat, for their part, are hoping that while they may not see results in the wins column, the progress they are making and the habits they are currently making will give them a boost once Butler returns. .
Spoelstra says this series of games has shown just how much more responsibility players like Adebayo, Dragic and Tyler Herro can take. Adebayo, in particular, has proven he is not done making jumps, managing most of the Heat’s production on offense while continuing to anchor them on defense. And before Wednesday’s game, Dragic had played more minutes per game in the Heat’s previous six games than he had in a season since 2017-18.
“He just wants to help our team win and he’s going for it,” Spoelstra said of Dragic. “This is where we are now. It will get better, but we don’t know when.
There is a cyclical nature to these struggles which, given the nature of a long season, could affect every team at one point or another. As the Mavs and Heat return to full force, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard entered health and safety protocols on Monday and did not travel with the Clippers for the start of their six-game road trip. Head coach Ty Lue said both players were feeling great, but the Clippers – who are 13-5 and one of the best teams in the league – quickly lost their first game without both players. .
When asked what lessons, if any, he felt he had learned from the two-week quarantine, Finney-Smith shrugged. “The healthiest team will probably have the best advantage in the NBA right now.”
[ad_2]
Source link