NEW ORLEANS — The Miami Heat’s six-game trip began with two losses, but it ended with four straight wins.
The Heat (36-20) extended its winning streak to four with a 112-97 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans (22-33) on Thursday night at Smoothie King Center. Miami closed the six-game trip with an impressive 4-2 record and remains at the top of the Eastern Conference.
On the way to the win, the Heat dominated the third quarter for a fourth consecutive game. Miami outscored New Orleans 27-18 in the third quarter to turn a one-point halftime lead into a 10-point advantage entering the fourth behind a strong defensive effort that forced the Pelicans into six turnovers in the period.
The Heat has outscored its opponents by a combined margin of 62 points in the third quarter during its four-game winning streak.
Bam Adebayo led the way for the Heat Thursday with another strong offensive performance that included 29 points on 13-of-21 shooting and 10 rebounds.
Jimmy Butler finished with 29 points on 9-of-16 shooting, eight rebounds, three assists, three steals and one block.
Kyle Lowry played the role of facilitator, recording 14 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists. It marks his second triple-double in his first season with the Heat and the 20th triple-double of his NBA career.
The Pelicans still hung around for most of the night, cutting the deficit to four with seven minutes left in the fourth quarter.
But that’s the closest that the Pelicans would get, as Lowry hit a three and Butler made a midrange jumper to push the Heat’s lead back up to nine a few minutes later.
CJ McCollum, who was traded from the Portland Trail Blazers to New Orleans this week, finished his Pelicans debut with 15 points on 6-of-21 shooting, seven rebounds and five assists.
There was a scary moment for the Heat in the win, though.
Starting forward P.J. Tucker limped to the locker room in the second quarter, with the Heat listing him as questionable to return because of a left knee contusion. But he returned to start the second half and was able to finish the game.
The Heat was without Tyler Herro (right knee soreness), Caleb Martin (left Achilles soreness, Markieff Morris (return to competition reconditioning) and Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) against the Pelicans.
The Heat now returns home to open a quick two-game homestand on Saturday against the Brooklyn Nets. With Miami already playing an NBA-high 32 road games this season, 17 of the Heat’s remaining 26 game will be played at FTX Arena.
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Pelicans:
The Heat’s leading trio of Adebayo, Butler and Lowry again led the way.
Adebayo, Butler and Lowry combined for 72 points on 73 percent shooting. The rest of the Heat’s roster scored just 50 points.
Adebayo continued to take an aggressive offensive approach, as he entered averaging 27.8 points on 18.9 shot attempts per 36 minutes in his last four games. He’s averaging 20.1 points on 14.5 shot attempts per 36 minutes for the season.
Butler finished Thursday’s win 11 of 11 from the foul line. He entered averaging the fifth-most free-throw attempts in the NBA at 7.8 per game behind only Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, James Harden and DeMar DeRozan.
Lowry is beginning to find his rhythm after returning last week from a nine-game absence due to personal reasons. In his last three games, he has totaled 31 assists and just four turnovers.
The Heat is 13-5 in the 18 games that the trio of Adebayo, Butler and Lowry have played in together this season.
The Heat played without two key reserves, which forced a tweak to the usual bench rotation.
Tyler Herro (right knee soreness) and Caleb Martin (left Achilles soreness) missed Thursday’s game. Both were listed as probable to play against the Pelicans on Wednesday’s injury report before being downgraded to questionable on Thursday and eventually being ruled out.
Herro warmed up before the game, but the team made the decision to keep him out as an active scratch. It’s the second straight game he has missed with the knee issue.
Martin has missed two of the last four games with left Achilles soreness. He also sat out the Heat’s win over the San Antonio Spurs on Feb. 3 because of the injury.
With Herro and Martin unavailable, the Heat used a bench rotation of Dewayne Dedmon, Gabe Vincent, Max Strus and Omer Yurtseven against the Pelicans. It marked just the sixth game that Yurtseven has played in since Adebayo returned from injury 13 games ago.
Along with missing Herro and Martin, Miami was also without Markieff Morris (return to competition reconditioning) and Victor Oladipo (right knee injury recovery) against the Pelicans.
That led to Spoelstra using the Heat’s seldom-used two-big lineups.
Entering Thursday’s game, the Adebayo-Dedmon pairing had posted a plus/minus plus-two in just nine minutes together this season. The Adebayo-Yurtseven frontcourt was a minus-four in only seven minutes together this season.
But the Adebayo-Dedmon and Adebayo-Yurtseven looks each logged minutes early in New Orleans.
Adebayo and Dedmon played the final 1:40 of the first quarter together, with the Heat outscoring the Pelicans 1-0 during that time.
The Adebayo-Yurtseven received a more extended look, with the Heat outscoring the Pelicans 15-13 while they played the first 5:02 of the second quarter together.
Adebayo and Dedmon also played together for a few minutes in the second half.
The rested Heat is undefeated this season.
The Heat improved to 11-0 this season when playing a game coming of of two or more days of rest.
In comparison, Miami is just 2-7 on the second night of back-to-backs and 23-13 with one day of rest. The Heat plays seven more games this season after two or more days off.
Also, the Pelicans haven’t had much success against the Heat lately. Miami has won seven of its last eight matchups against New Orleans, with the Pelicans defeating the Heat just once since 2018.
Erik Spoelstra and Butler will be on opposite sides next week.
Eastern Conference captain Kevin Durant and Western Conference captain LeBron James picked their All-Star teams with a draft on Thursday night.
Spoelstra and his staff are coaching Team Durant in the Feb. 20 All-Star Game, which is taking place at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland. But James selected Butler to be on his team with the 17th overall pick in a draft that included 23 selections.
The full teams look like this ...
Team Durant: Joel Embiid, Ja Morant, Jayson Tatum, Andrew Wiggins and Trae Young as the starters, and LaMelo Ball, Devin Booker, Rudy Gobert, Zach LaVine, Khris Middleton, Dejounte Murray and Karl-Anthony Towns as the reserves.
Team LeBron: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, DeMar DeRozan, James, Nikola Jokic as the starters, and Butler, Luka Doncic, Darius Garland, James Harden, Donovan Mitchell, Chris Paul and Fred VanVleet as the reserves.
