- Biggest culprit is (1) transition defense has been awful. Not picking up ball-handlers and trailers. Not getting into bodies quickly enough. And (2) miscommunication so bad it's like the telephone hasn't been invented yet.

- vs MIN, Miami got torched in drop. But transition defense and lack of urgency on closeouts was just as big of a problem.

vs DET...
- they lost John Collins over and over. On his first 3, Bam stepped all the way into the paint and to help Giannis on Duren and left Collins wide open in the fill corner. No reason for that. He has to trust Giannis to handle Duren.

- Wiggins was horrible in this one. Closeouts were limp. He was put into some tough spots as a low man a couple of times, but he needs to be better when he's near the ball.

- You can see how bad Davion Mitchell wants to prove that he's an elite defender. His No.1 goal is to fight over every screen. Unfortunately, he can't. When he gets screened, it's putting his teammates in tough spots. He needs to learn when to give up and ask for the switch. He got crushed going over on a screen for Cade which put the Heat in rotation -- a rotation that barely happened - and that led to a wide-open Duncan 3.

- 🚨Another thing I've noticed, when Bam and Giannis are on the court together, they seem to both be playing center. Giannis is used to playing as a FS, Bam is used to quarterbacking from the middle. They end up guarding the same space way too often. Check out the clip. Wiggins loses Huerter and both Bam and Giannis slide over to help. Huerter ends up with two wide-open shooters and Collins nails the triple.

- There were a lot of similar issues vs CHA. Only transition defense was even worse on the second night of a back-to-back. Bam also lost Naz Reid a few times. You hope that they clean up this stuff ahead of tonight's game vs Dallas.

Good news is that it's fundamentals. Communication and effort needs to be better. It's less of a scheme issue, and more of an understanding of the scheme issue. In other words, the Heat need to get on the same page defensively. And Bam and Giannis have to decide who the center is.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/kelly-olynyk-leaving-nba-time-162459386.html

(Only saying stepped away because he doesn't say retired, but we know what this means lol).

Great career even if there's perfectly valied reasons to hate him (K Love arm pull).

Best big man fit we've ever given Bam which is hilariously depressing to think about. Our off-ball actions (with Dunc/Herro/Olynyk) hasn't been the same since that 2020 run tbh.

Wish him the best in Italy!

I have 4 tickets to tonight’s game, I cannot go and want to give them to a fan or family that wants to go.

In this sub and the main sub.

The Heat have lost to the 2 best teams in the league.

They almost came back to win against the Hornets but a generational 4 point play fuck up by THJ and an off game by the MVP GIANNIS got in the way of victory.

Tonight they finally face a team with a losing record, so if they lose tonight, that doomer feeling would start to be warranted IMO.

I think we beat Dallas but it’ll probably be closer than we want 😂 Need a big game from Giannis and more from Bam tonight.
Main thing for me is better defending. Can’t expect Giannis to score 35 every game just to give us a chance. If Kyrie plays, I’m a bit worried.
Only 3 games in so I’m not panicking yet, but going 0–4 would hurt.
I’m saying 116–109 Heat. What you guys thinking?

Hello everyone! Thank you for those who supported by watching and/or sharing, it means the world to us! Feedback was great, main issue was the audio which was addressed. My voice is now a lot louder, and it should be good going forward. Here’s the link to episode 2! They’ll be coming out on Mondays and Thursdays! Apple Music link is still pending, once that gets sorted out I’ll send a link here! This will be the last one of these as I don’t want to violate the guidelines here, just wanted to share that the audio was fixed.

https://youtu.be/N7W5UyaDT5Q?si=9QMjSNYZxRGbvZGl

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0a200BcN4Vbz8az8DUPp1M?si=D_1gmbkiRyamNRwqPJkiDg&utm_source=copy-link

The Heat are 0-3 to start the season for the first time since 2007.

I swear..The amount of times there has been like 2 seconds on the clock and the opponent just swishes some random bs on us is crazy. And this isnt just this year lol. Am I alone in feelin like this sometimes?

Tomorrow night we win our 1st game, its gonna happen. We build from there. Settle down and let these guys get some reps to gel. Offense is completely different around Giannis and at the same time implementing a bunch of different players in a new system. The open shots will start to fall. 0-3 is not ideal but give it time and we're turning it around. We do however need a backup ball handler/creator come deadline. So chill Heat nation, we're in a better position than we have been in a while

I have a theory about the fans who are permanently convinced the season is over, everyone needs to get fired, and we’re never making the playoffs.

Predicting failure gives them something to get out of failure.

If you believe the team has a chance and they lose, you’re disappointed. If you’ve spent the whole week saying they’re going to lose, you’re still disappointed

but now you also get to say, “I fucking told you.”

The team failed. Your judgment was vindicated. I think that second feeling can take some of the sting out of the first.

You’re giving yourself two possible payoffs: either the team wins and you’re happy to be wrong, or the team loses and you get the satisfaction of having seen it coming. Or “Being Right” and bragging about how much smarter you are than your fellow fans.

It’s cowardly as fuck tbh…

“At least I wasn’t one of the idiots who believed in them” can be a pretty comforting thought when the alternative is admitting you cared, hoped, and got disappointed.

The shooting numbers behind this 0–3 start are pretty ridiculous. Most of you just don’t understand what you are watching and just caveman out and go “ball go in, yay!” “Ball don’t go in, boooo!”

Watching these games, it’s felt like teams are hitting tough shots against us while we’re missing decent looks. So I checked the NBA’s closest-defender tracking data.

Through our first three games:

We’re shooting 29.3% on open and wide-open threes combined. Opponents are shooting 52% on contested ones.

And Miami is allowing the 12th-fewest wide-open three-point attempts per game, at 16.3. League average is 17.4. But opponents are making 44.9% of those looks, the second-highest percentage allowed by any team.

So we’re giving up slightly fewer wide-open attempts than average, and teams are converting them at almost the highest rate in the league.

The broader shot distribution tells a similar story…..80.6% of opponents’ tracked threes against Miami have been open or wide open, compared with 86.5% league-wide last season. Would you look at that? Probably umm…pretty consequential to winning games right?

I also compared the attempts in each distance category with last season’s league shooting percentage for that category. Miami comes out about 20 points below expectation, and opponents about 27 points above, across the three games.

The shooting is GOING to even out, it will NOT be this stupid all season. The BIGGER problem is thatOpponents are grabbing 34.4% of available offensive rebounds against us. That has to get fixed, IMO spo should really just instead of using portis as the backup center, run portis at the 4 and nick Richards at the 5 with the second unit to clean some of that up. I trust spo will fix that.

But 25 contested attempts is also a tiny sample. I don’t think we should treat opponents shooting 52% on those attempts…or us shooting 29% on open looks as significant like AT ALL.

Last year we started 13–7, got to 14–7, and finished 43–39. That early stretch didn’t tell us everything about that team. Did yall forget how hot our shooting started last season and how cold our opponents were? Well, guess what? That evened out too.

So calm down.

Jalen Suggs possibly down with an achilles
Jalen Williams broke his leg
Zubac reinjures ankle injury that left him sidelined for a bunch of time last season
Banchero out for 4-6 weeks

It’s time to string some wins.