Coup’s Takeaways: HEAT Get Right In San Francisco As Jaquez Jr. And Jovic Hold Off Hot Night From Curry
1. A cross country flight. A double overtime loss. A back-to-back against a good team. These are the situations that setup most teams for failure.
Those are also the exact situations where the HEAT surprise you, even if you’ve been surprised so many times before.
The start to this one in San Francisco wasn’t any more aesthetically pleasing than the opening in Sacramento, both teams missing as it looked like everyone was moving in slow motion. Then Steph Curry, after an airball, came to life with three straight jumpers to give the Warriors an early lead. The rest of the half belonged to Miami.
Zone once again helped, Kel’el Ware showing positive moments as a rim deterrence in the middle of it as the Warriors, not a particularly big team as far as having the size to pass over the top of the zone, struggled for clean looks. With Jaime Jaquez Jr. attacking the seams and finishing through contact and Duncan Robinson finishing off the quarter with consecutive threes, Miami owned a 29-23 advantage by the team the first 12 were done.
The one thing about the zone, though, is that it’s effectively a super deep drop coverage against any screen set on the perimeter and Draymond Green used that to his advantage to spring Curry for another couple of threes to open the third. Problem for the Warriors was that nobody else was making much of anything (8-of-29 from three in the half, six of those makes from Curry), and with Miami’s threes falling it was all more than enough for a 61-48 lead at the half even with the Warriors earning themselves some second chances on the glass.
Golden State started to find a little offense to open the third, Miami still toggling into zone, but so too did Terry Rozier while Jaquez Jr. dropped in a soft running hook as the lead held. A couple of Warriors threes, another one from Curry – off a reverse spin around the screen that maybe nobody else in the league could pull off – with Ware dropped back closed the gap to six. Ware got it back on the other end with a pair of lobs as Nikola Jovic effectively passed him open, but the Warriors had found their verve by that point, the lead down to three before a right corner three from Herro, the game becoming a bit more frazzled before the buzzer took Miami into the fourth up 84-78.
Curry (31 points on 22 shots) wasn’t done, tying his season high with his eighth three right as the quarter began. The Warriors had it down to one, but then consecutive missed threes led to consecutive corner threes for Jovic, the second of which came with a foul. It what felt like seconds, Miami’s lead was back to double digits as Alec Burks sank a triple.
With Miami up 18, Steve Kerr waved the white flag and pulled his starters with three minutes to play, the night in the HEAT’s hands as they ultimately take it, 114-98, to end their brief losing streak.
2. It’s a bit reductive to boil it down like this, but it always feels like a bit of a variance play from Erik Spoelstra – particularly on nights where the team is either shorthanded or on a rest disadvantage – when the team sits back in zone for most of the night. On some level, though, that’s what it is and it’s earned Miami a fair amount of wins over the years.
The bet paid off tonight in spades. Curry did get his, no doubt, as having a center dropped all the way back in the paint gave him plenty of airspace – insofar as the airspace he requires is half that of anyone else – to knock down 8-of-17 from deep. But with the rest of Curry’s team 6-of-33 (18.1 percent) from the arc and the zone doing its job of sealing off the rim beyond a handful of nice passing combinations, the HEAT were playing with a math advantage simply from the strategy being deployed.
You still have to make your own shots, though, and it helps to earn the right looks along the way. You can call anything variance if you want, but teams have to create their own luck along the way – shots aren’t actually coin flips – and Miami was the more aggressive, more physical team throughout, their constant drive-and-kick action tilting Golden State’s defense and creating one open three after another as the HEAT finished 6-of-13 from the corners. It was that early fourth-quarter sequence, three straight missed Warriors threes followed by three straight HEAT threes, all of them open, that decided this one after the lead had shrunk to one. That’s variance, sure, but you have to defend when you’re in zone or man and the HEAT (16-of-40 from deep) played their game the way they’re supposed to in order to give themselves a chance to win with superior shooting.
3. Very fine evenings both for Jaquez Jr. (18 points on 12 shots) and Jovic (20 points on 17 shots) to help out Herro and Adebayo the night after that double-overtime affair.
Jaquez Jr. did much of his damage early, punishing the Warriors’ smaller lineups on one hand but also showing zero fear of a generational defender in Draymond Green on the other. The jumper has been here and there for Jaquez Jr. – he did hit a three tonight – but what has been lost in his sophomore season is that his driving game, by far the most impressive part of his rookie outing, has been just as effective as before. The developmental journey is ongoing, the downhill, physical, shoulders-first and footwork-second part of it is miles ahead of the majority of the league.
Jovic hit those two corner threes, yes, but what continues to impress is the way he’s using his size with the ball in his hands. A few of his six two-pointers were easy runouts off live-ball turnovers, others were downhill moves, through contact. Where once Jovic would look rushed when trying to get to the right finish, he’s now slowing down in the paint, finding the right angles to where he can just finish over the top. It’s still interesting to see teams doubling him in the post before he even scores on them from the block, but while it happens Jovic has happily been whipping passes to the weakside corner for open looks. There’s some nice chemistry with Kel’el Ware, too, as Jovic twice passed the rookie open, essentially directing Ware’s movement by leading him with a look over the top when a defender turned his back. Those are the passes that don’t come easy, and they’re the passes that really excite you about where Jovic could take his game.