MIAMI — No team in the NBA shot better on 3-pointers during the regular season than the Miami Heat. Of those still remaining, no team has shot worse in the playoffs from beyond the arc than Erik Spoelstra’s.
That, in a nutshell, sums up how months of 3-point exhilaration have turned into postseason desperation.
“That’s part of the game, part of the playoffs,” Spoelstra said, with his Heat falling from a 2-0 lead in this best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Philadelphia 76ers into a 2-2 tie going into Tuesday’s 7:30 p.m Game 5 at FTX Arena. “Sometimes you don’t make shots. But you still have opportunities to grind out and win ugly.”
And it got plenty ugly in Sunday night’s 116-108 loss at Wells Fargo Center, with the Heat closing 7 of 35 on 3-pointers.
“We shot 7 of 35 from three? That don’t even sound like us,” center Bam Adebayo said. “We’ll figure it out.”
That was after the Heat shot 7 of 30 on 3-pointers in their Game 3 loss.
“A lot of it comes down to us making shots,” forward Jimmy Butler said after scoring 40 in Sunday’s loss. “When we make shots, we tend to play defense. When we don’t, we don’t.”
In the Game 2 victory that put the Heat up 2-0, they did and did, closing 14 of 29 from beyond the arc.
Butler said the only option is to keep shooting.
“I don’t think we go out there and shoot 82 bad shots,” he said of Sunday’s overall 38 of 82. “I think every shot that we shoot we think is going in. And we’re going to take the same shots the next game and they’re going to fall, because that’s the way we’ve been playing all year long. We’re not scared of missing shots. If anything, we probably should have jacked up more.”
The Heat shot a league-best .379 on 3-pointers during the regular season. But in the playoffs, they are at .320, 13th of the 16 playoff teams, worst of the eight still playing.
“I think guys are getting good looks,” guard Kyle Lowry said. “Tyler [Herro] good looks. Gabe [Vincent] good looks. P.J. [Tucker] got good looks. We just literally made seven 3-pointers. We got some really good looks. So I feel like the next game, I think we’ll be positive and confident that we’ll make those threes.”
The drop in percentage has coincided with the removal of Duncan Robinson from the rotation, as Spoelstra has attempted to limit his team’s defensive liabilities. Robinson has played 55 seconds in this series, mop-up duty at the end of Game 2. Nonetheless, he is a team-best 10 of 19 on 3-pointers this season.
“I mean obviously right now, you look at the percentage, that’s an easy conclusion,” Spoelstra said of the correlation between no 3-pointers and no Robinson. “But we still had some really good looks. And the guys that got the looks, we have great 3-point shooters on this team.
“It just seemed like it just kind of flipped. It seemed like Philly was saying the same thing in the two games in Miami.”
Ultimately, no firm commitment to a return of Robinson, who has been squeezed out by Max Strus (25 of 74 on 3-pointers in the playoffs), Victor Oladipo (8 of 27) and Caleb Martin (3 of 17), among others.
“But we still want our guys letting it fly,” Spoelstra said. “I’d like to see a few more threes, see if we can generate a few more of those, particularly the way we can shoot the ball.
“But again, right now, I just need to get to the film and see what’s real and what the emotion of the game.”
Moving up
Butler’s 40-point effort apparently led to a Marquette reclassification.
“He was amazing,” 76ers coach Doc Rivers said. “I moved him to second all-time at Marquette. I really did. It was Wade, then of course [me], and then Jimmy. Now, Jimmy’s ahead of me, for sure. I gave that up tonight.”
It was Butler’s fourth career 40-point playoff game, all coming with the Heat. With his six assists, he now leads the Heat in all-time postseasons 40-point/five-assist games, with three.
