Takeaways From New York Knicks’ Blowout Win Over the Miami Heat

The Miami Heat’s flames continues to be doused, this time by the New York Knicks in a 116-95 loss.

The Heat’s losing streak now stands at eight, the longest such streak Erik Spoelstra has had to deal with in his tenure as coach. The Knicks now have a 43-26 record for the season, firmly in control of the third seed in the Eastern Conference while the Heat stand at 29-39.

After last night’s loss at Madison Square Garden, (along with the Chicago Bulls’ win) the Heat moved down to the 10th seed in the East. On top of that, since the Portland Trail Blazers’ won as well, the Heat’s first-round pick jumped in the lottery order from No. 11 to No. 9. As a reminder, the Heat keep their pick if lands in the top 14 and own the Warriors’ top-10 protected first rounder.

Here are some takeaways from the game:

Shooting Woes

What if I told you the Heat had a game where Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro combined for 42 points tonight with solid percentages from the field? Would you be surprised if I then told you they had one of their worst shooting games of the season as a team despite that?

The Heat made just six threes, and Robinson made five of them. The rest of the team shot one for 14. Outside of their two shooters in Herro and Robinson, they just don’t have real threats to make threes consistently.

Good teams have figured out to run the Heat’s best shooters off the line and properly help to cut off the roll man. They will live with the results.

This typically ends with Herro or Robinson taking floaters or making passes to subpar shooters. The Heat can occasionally make something happen that way, but their only real shooters don’t get many great looks and end up taking mostly tougher ones as a result when they do get threes up. Last night was a good example of that, as Herro was only 0 for 3 from three while converting on 10 of his 15 twos.

Ugly Second Quarter Turns Into Third Quarter Collapse

Heat fans who have continued to watch despite the losses know exactly what’s going to happen. The Heat play a competitive first quarter and then vomit all over themselves at some point in the game (I hope Tracy Morgan is doing okay).

The Heat went with a different starting lineup again, this time with Duncan Robinson, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Haywood Highsmith alongside Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo. They started with a 12-0 run.

The Knicks then outscored the Heat by 33 the rest of the way. In the halfcourt, the Heat converted on just nine of 30 shots in the second and third quarters, (30 percent). The Knicks shot 57 percent field in that span.

The Knicks to score a staggering 171 points per 100 possessions in the third quarter, including shooting 11 of 16 (69 percent) from the field in the half-court.

Sloppy Ball-Handling

The Heat finished with a 1.1 assist-to-turnover ratio (23 assists, 21 turnovers) to the Knicks’ 2.14 (30 assists, 14 turnovers). The Utah Jazz, who turn over the ball the most in the league, average 17.6 turnovers.

The Heat had 14 turnovers against eight assists in the second and third quarters.

Alexander Toledo is a contributor to Miami Heat On SI. He can be reached at ToledoAlexander22@gmail.com. Twitter: @tropicalblanket