Coup’s Takeaways: Doncic, Dallas Surge Late As Miami Falls Short
1. HEAT fans may not like seeing nice words about Dallas, but you have to credit the Mavericks for playing a beautiful brand of basketball for most of the evening. When Luka Doncic (21 points, 6 assists) wasn’t hunting matchups – and even when he was, and Miami sent help that direction – Dallas was moving the ball with fervor and accuracy (27 assists on 34 shots). When many teams face the HEAT’s defense, they take that initial advantage earned and go with the first shot it creates. Which, against Miami, is typically an open three. Dallas played out the string, attacking the rotations and closeouts until they found an optimal opportunity. Yes, more often than not that was still a three (54 percent of Dallas’ shots came from beyond the arc, 18-of-41) but so many of them came in rhythm off a series of drive-and-kicks.
And on the other end, Dallas stepped up. After getting beat in one-on-one situations for much of the first half, players like Maxi Kleber and Dwight Powell stepped up and got the stops Dallas needed. Jimmy Butler (29 points on 18 shots, 13-of-14 at the line) almost brought the HEAT back with a parade to the free-throw line, but there wasn’t quite enough juice across the board.
2. The first best thing about having a stable of good shooters is that they’re good at some of the highest value shots in the game. The second best thing about having a stable of good shooters is that teams will sometimes give them so much attention due simply to the threat of them making the highest value shots in the game that they grease the wheels of the rest of your offense. So no, the threes didn’t quite fall Tuesday night (7-of-27 for Miami) but the gravity of those shooters was felt for most of the first halfas they consistently drew a second defender on the perimeter, opening things up for all of Miami’s bigs to get downhill. For a time, it was an idealized version of Miami’s offense even as they were getting many threes up.
Of course, this is only sound logic in practice as long as you’re still hitting a reasonable amount of threes to keep the defense worried about the threat. Eventually, Dallas stopped chasing over the top of screens and went to their switching lineups. As we’ve seen Miami deal with before, their clutch offense struggled with those switches. The HEAT scored 19 in the third – a quarter they spent the last week-plus owning – and 21 in the fourth. A conversation for another day, that one.
3. When Kyle Lowry is available, the HEAT are a matchup-hunting team. Luke Doncic is a matchup-hunting offense all on his own. When you put those two together, you get a game of matchup chess. For most of the night, Bam Adebayo was standing his ground just fine against Doncic (5-of-19 shooting) but whenever the Mavericks’ source-engine attacked anywhere else Miami’s defense was getting tilted into heavy rotation and Dallas was getting open threes. Erik Spoelstra sent his doubles at Doncic to get the ball out of his hands, but there aren’t many better passers in the league against a double. The problem, as it were for a time as Miami took an early 13-point lead, for Dallas was that while they were getting threes in bunches, the HEAT were attacking in the same way on the other end and getting both open threes and opportunities in the paint – where Doncic was doubled Butler and Adebayo (21 points on 19 shots) were free to go to work against their preferred matchups until late in the third when Butler started seeing doubles and even a triple – and they made the most of them. Miami won point in the paint, 52-24.
But in the end, those matchups were either tougher to come by, those same defenders improved as the game wore on, or Dallas outright refused to let the HEAT play that way with the aforementioned doubles. The endgame outcome for Miami’s matchup-game is drawing more help – and these are good reps to learn what to do with help that deliberate.
-Next Up For Miami: Thursday, 7:00pm vs. Charlotte. Watch It Live Live On League Pass.
