NEW YORK — Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 101-92 loss to the New York Knicks on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden to close a quick two-game trip winless at 0-2. The Heat now returns to Miami to face the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday:
The Heat knows the importance of these games as the regular season winds down, but it’s just not winning them.
Before the game, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said: “That old adage, would you play if it was the playoffs? We’re basically at that moment right now. These are playoff games for us.”
So far, that desperation has not produced positive results. The Heat dropped its third straight game during a stretch it needs to stack wins just to avoid the play-in tournament.
After 20 lead changes and 12 ties through the first three quarters the Knicks took an 86-84 lead with 7:14 to play and never let it go.
The Heat led 84-83 with 8:57 remaining, but the Knicks responded by going on a game-deciding 17-5 run to take an 11-point lead on their way to the win.
The Heat’s leading duo of Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler were quiet, combining for just 21 points on 9-of-20 shooting from the field and 3-of-4 shooting from the foul line.
Adebayo finished with nine points, 11 rebounds and four assists.
Butler, who played after missing Tuesday’s loss to the Toronto Raptors with neck soreness, closed with 12 points, three rebounds and six assists.
The Heat lost to a Knicks team that played the entire second half without without All-Star forward Julius Randle, who exited the game with with 2:38 left in the second quarter and never returned.
Immanuel Quickley led the Knicks with a game-high 24 points off the bench.
Wednesday’s loss not only pushed the Heat deeper into play-in tournament territory, but also essentially ended its pursuit of the fifth playoff seed.
The No. 7 Heat is now 1.5 games behind the No. 6 Nets and four games behind the No. 5 Knicks in the Eastern Conference standings. Miami has just five games left on its regular-season schedule.
There’s still a realistic path for the Heat to catch the Nets, but it won’t be easy. Miami is now two games behind Brooklyn in the loss column, but it’s essentially a three-game gap because the Nets own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat after sweeping the regular-season series 3-0.
There’s technically still a path for the Heat to catch the Knicks, but it would probably require Miami to win each of its final five regular-season games. The Heat is four games behind the Knicks in the loss column, but it’s essentially five games because Wednesday’s win clinched the season series and head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat.
The only way those head-to-head tiebreakers wouldn’t matter would be if the Heat finished in a three-way tie with the Nets and Knicks. As the only likely division winner, the Heat would win that three-way tie.
To escape having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament, the Heat needs to finish as a top-six playoff seed in the East. The seventh through 10th-place teams in each conference participate in the play-in tournament.
The hope was that the addition of veteran forward Kevin Love would help solve some of the Heat’s three-point shooting issues, but he hasn’t done that yet.
Love closed Wednesday’s loss with five points on 1-of-7 shooting from deep.
Since joining the Heat during the All-Star break last month, Love has shot 23 of 82 (28 percent) from three-point range. Considering he shot 39.2 percent on 6.4 three-points attempts per game last season and has made 37.1 percent of his three-point attempts over his NBA career, more was expected from Love.
Entering Wednesday, Love ranked 86th in three-point percentage among the 90 NBA players who have put up at least 70 three-point attempts since the break. The only players trailing Love on that list were Toronto’s Pascal Siakam, Milwaukee’s Pat Connaughton and Brooklyn’s Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith.
The Heat entered Wednesday with the NBA’s fourth-worst team three-point percentage at 34.1 percent. Miami shot 13 of 39 (33.3 percent) from beyond the arc in its loss to the Knicks.
With Max Strus running into early foul trouble for the Heat, Duncan Robinson made the most of a rare opportunity to play extended minutes.
Strus was called for his third foul with 2:57 left in the first quarter just 2:53 after entering the game off the Heat’s bench. That led to early minutes for Robinson.
Robinson entered for Strus with 2:57 remaining in the opening period and played the rest of the first half to play 14:57 in the first quarter. He provided a lift, too, making each of three three-point attempts to score nine points in the first half.
Those 15 first-half minutes were more than Robinson has played in an entire game since logged 17 minutes in a March 6 win over the Atlanta Hawks.
That’s because Robinson has fallen out of the rotation as the Heat’s roster has gotten healthier. He has received seven DNP-CDs (did not play, coach’s decision) in the last 16 games.
But Robinson’s solid first-half stint turned into more minutes in Wednesday’s second half. He played 13 minutes in the final two quarters.
As for Strus, he did not play again after picking up his third foul in the first quarter.
Heat guard Kyle Lowry sat out Wednesday’s game on the second night of a back-to-back as a precaution after recently returning from a knee injury.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, considering Lowry told reporters following the Heat’s Tuesday morning shootaround that he had not yet been medically cleared to play in both games of a back-to-back. He logged 24 minutes in Tuesday’s loss to the Raptors.
But there was some hope that Lowry could play against the Knicks on Wednesday for a few hours when he was upgraded from out to questionable on the afternoon injury report. But ultimately the decision was made to hold Lowry out on the back end of the back-to-back.
Lowry, who turned 37 on Saturday, returned in early March from left knee pain that forced him to miss 15 straight games. The Heat has taken a cautious approach with him ever since, limiting his minutes to about 20 per game and playing him off the bench.
Lowry has now missed one game on each of the Heat’s two back-to-backs since he returned, also sitting out the Heat’s March 18 loss to the Chicago Bulls on the front end of a back-to-back and then playing the next night in a March 19 win over the Detroit Pistons.
The Heat has one back-to-back remaining on its regular-season schedule on April 6 against the 76ers in Philadelphia and April 7 against Wizards in Washington. Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said this week that the team has not yet decided whether Lowry will also be held out of one of those games.
Along with Lowry, the Heat was missing Jamal Cain (G League), Nikola Jovic (back spasms) and Orlando Robinson (G League) against the Knicks.
