CLEVELAND — Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 113-87 blowout loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers (10-6) on Sunday night at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse to fall to 0-3 on its four-game trip. The Heat (7-10) closes the trip on Monday against the Minnesota Timberwolves (8 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) on the second night of a back-to-back:
To earn a win over a quality Cavaliers team, the undermanned Heat needed close to a perfect performance. Sunday’s display was far from perfect for Miami.
With just 10 available players amid a rash of injuries, the Heat was already facing an uphill battle against the Cavaliers. Cleveland entered as one of only five NBA teams with both a top-10 offensive rating and defensive rating after the offseason acquisition of star guard Donovan Mitchell.
The Heat — missing its top two scorers in Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro, among others — made its situation even tougher with an unfortunate combination of three-point shooting and turnover struggles
The Heat, which entered ranked 20th in the NBA in team three-point percentage this season, shot just 2 of 15 from three-point range in the first half and 6 of 31 from beyond the arc for the game.
Turnovers haven’t been a big issue for the Heat this season, but it was on Sunday. The Heat, which entered with NBA’s eighth-lowest turnover rate, committed nine first-half turnovers and 16 turnovers for the game that the Cavaliers turned into 28 points.
After a competitive first quarter that the Cavaliers won 28-27, Cleveland opened the second quarter on a 23-5 run to pull ahead by 19 points. The Cavaliers ended up outscoring the Heat 31-15 in the second period to enter halftime with a 17-point lead.
The Heat never made a run to get back into the game, as the Cavaliers held a double-digit lead for the entire second half. Cleveland’s led by as many as many as 32 points.
Cleveland was one of the first teams that had had sustained success against Miami’s 2-3 zone. With the Heat using zone for most of the game, the Cavaliers totaled 113 points on 53 percent shooting from the field.
Heat starting center Bam Adebayo returned after missing the previous two games with a left knee contusion, finishing Sunday’s loss with a team-high 21 points on 7-of-14 shooting from the field and 7-of-7 shooting from the foul line, six rebounds and three assists in 27 minutes.
Adebayo did not play in the fourth quarter with the start of the Heat’s next game less than 24 hours away.
Adebayo’s return and the Heat’s injury issues created an opportunity for Adebayo and rookie forward Nikola Jovic to play their first minutes together of the season.
Jovic, who started at center in place of the injured Adebayo in the previous two games, recorded seven points on 2-of-9 shooting from the field and 1-of-6 shooting on threes, four rebounds and five assists in 32 minutes.
The intriguing frontcourt combination of Adebayo and Jovic not only played their first minutes together, they also started Sunday’s game.
There were some flashes of the duo’s potential, with Jovic making a nice pass on the short roll to find Adebayo for an open baseline midrange jumper for the Heat’s first points of the game.
But with Adebayo and Jovic on the court together, the Heat was still outscored by four points in 17 minutes on Sunday.
Duncan Robinson returned for the Heat after missing a game with an injury for the first time in his NBA career. But then he left Sunday’s loss with another injury.
After sitting out Friday’s loss to the Washington Wizards because of a sprained right hand, Robinson returned to contribute seven points on 1-of-3 shooting on threes and one rebound in 21 minutes off the bench against the Cavaliers. But he left the game early, limping to the locker room with 9:33 left in the fourth quarter and never returned because of a sprained left ankle.
While the reason initially given for Robinson’s hand injury was that he sprained it when he caught his finger in another player’s jersey during Friday’s morning shootaround, Robinson clarified before Sunday’s game that he actually hurt his hand while playing a two-on-two game with teammates.
“It didn’t get caught in a jersey, it didn’t get cut by a jersey,” Robinson said. “It just got hit when we were playing two-on-two, and it wasn’t in shootaround like we were just walking through something. It was playing live.”
How hard was it for Robinson to accept that he would need to miss a game because of an injury for the first time in his NBA career?
“It was hard,” he said. “It was a tough decision. I couldn’t shoot. I couldn’t catch and I couldn’t shoot.”
Adebayo, Dewayne Dedmon and Robinson were the three players who returned after missing Friday’s game to give the Heat 10 available players on Sunday after having just seven available players in Friday’s loss to the Wizards.
There haven’t been much good news on the injury front for the Heat lately. But the team received some positive news on Sunday regarding Jimmy Butler’s injury.
Butler returned to Miami after Friday’s loss to the Wizards to undergo further evaluation of his injured right knee and those tests came back clean, a league source told the Miami Herald on Sunday. He is considered to be day-to-day and he could return as soon as this week, with the Heat returning home to host the Wizards on Wednesday and Friday before hitting the road to take on the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday to open another four-game trip.
“It was really to get back there and get in our facility and do the necessary work around the clock,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said Sunday of Butler returning to Miami. “But the update I got today was promising.”
Heat guard Tyler Herro is also in Miami and missed his seventh straight game on Sunday because of a sprained left ankle.
“He’s not quite ready,” Spoelstra said when asked why Herro hasn’t joined the Heat on the trip.
Heat guard Gabe Vincent, who missed his second straight because of a swollen left knee, said he doesn’t believe his injury is “anything serious.”
“I think it’s more so the type of minutes I play,” Vincent said of what caused the knee issue. “I think I’m a pretty aggressive player, I think I take a lot of hits, I think I’m on the ground a lot, I use my body a lot. It’s the nature of it. It’s a physical game.”
The other three Heat players who missed Sunday’s game were Udonis Haslem (personal reasons), Victor Oladipo (left knee tendinosis) and Omer Yurtseven (left ankle surgery).
The Heat has one more opportunity to avoid its first winless four-game trip in more than a decade.
The last time the Heat went winless on a trip that lasted at least four games was when it went 0-4 on a four-game trip all the way back in March 2008. Miami finished the 2007-08 season with a 15-67 record.
The Heat will need to defeat the Timberwolves on Monday on the final game of the trip to avoid doing it again for the first time in nearly 15 years.
The Heat has dropped its last six road games and and is 1-6 away from home for the season.
