‘Tough time’ for Heat continues with sixth straight defeat. Takeaways from road loss to Knicks

The Miami Heat hasn’t won a game in nearly two weeks.

That unfortunate streak continued, as the Heat (24-22) dropped its sixth straight game in a 125-109 loss to the New York Knicks (29-17) on Saturday afternoon at Madison Square Garden.

This is the Heat’s first six-game skid since losing six straight games in March 2021.

“Look, right now we’re going to rally around each other, rally around our identity,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “It’s a tough time right now.”

Meanwhile, it’s a great time for the Knicks. New York improved to 12-2 in its last 14 games since acquiring forward OG Anunoby through a trade in late December.

The Heat put themselves in position to end the skid on Saturday, tying the score at 86 with 13.2 seconds left in the third quarter.

But that’s when the Knicks went on a game-deciding 26-10 run to break the game open and pull ahead by 16 points with 6:19 remaining in the fourth quarter.

The Heat never recovered, as the Knicks’ lead grew to as large as 22 points in the final minutes.

The Knicks dominated the fourth quarter, totaling 36 points on 13-of-18 (72.2 percent) shooting from the field and 5-of-8 (62.5 percent) shooting on threes against a struggling Heat defense that has allowed more than 120 points in two straight games.

“Defensively, I don’t remember us getting a stop,” Spoelstra said of the fourth quarter. “The minutes until I called the timeout and then probably three minutes after that, I don’t remember a stop. That was the game. It went like that.”

The Heat scored just 23 points and committed five turnovers in the fourth quarter.

“They scored more baskets than we did,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said of the final period. “That’s really simple. It’s just we had defensive lapses, lack of communication. It’s been happening game after game.”

Jalen Brunson was the catalyst behind the Knicks’ victory, finishing with a game-high 32 points to go with five rebounds and eight assists. He scored 12 points in the fourth quarter.

Knicks forward Julius Randle added 19 points and nine rebounds before leaving the game in the fourth quarter with a shoulder injury.

Butler scored a team-high 28 points for the Heat. He also finished with eight rebounds and four assists.

Duncan Robinson added 19 points off the Heat’s bench on 5-of-11 shooting from three-point range.

Also for the Heat, Tyler Herro scored 18 points on 18 field-goal attempts. Adebayo recorded 12 points and 13 rebounds for the second-fewest points he has scored in a game this season.

“We’re trying to sacrifice and do the right thing, trying to get on the same page and get connected,” Adebayo said after his quiet scoring performance.

The Heat now returns to Miami to begin a quick two-game homestand on Monday against the Phoenix Suns. The Heat will look to avoid its first seven-game skid since late in the 2007-08 season, a season that Miami won just 15 games in.

Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Knicks on Saturday:

For the first time this season, the Heat was whole.

The Heat entered Saturday with the fourth-most missed games in the league this season due to injury at 152 games, according to Spotrac’s tracker.

But after dealing with injury issues for the first three months of the season, the Heat’s full contingent of rotation players was available for the first time this season on Saturday. The only Heat player unavailable was Dru Smith, who is out for the rest of the season after undergoing knee surgery in late December.

“That definitely is encouraging that we basically have our full contingent,” Spoelstra said before Saturday’s game.

So, how did the Heat’s rotation look against the Knicks?

The Heat stuck with the starting lineup of Terry Rozier, Herro, Butler, Haywood Highsmith and Adebayo for the second straight game.

The Heat then played Kevin Love, Duncan Robinson, Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Caleb Martin off the bench to complete the nine-man rotation before emptying the bench late in the lopsided loss.

Butler was aggressive early and often in looking for his own offense. That helped, but it wasn’t enough.

During the first five games of the Heat’s now six-game skid, Butler averaged 17.6 points on 10.4 field-goal attempts and 5.2 free-throw attempts per game. That’s pedestrian for Butler’s All-NBA standards.

The Heat needs Butler to be aggressive and play as the center of the offense.

Butler did that, totaling 11 points on 4-of-7 shooting from the field and 2-of-2 shooting from the foul line in Saturday’s first quarter. It marked his highest-scoring first quarter since scoring 11 points in the opening period of a Dec. 16 win over the Chicago Bulls and the most field goals he has taken in a first quarter this season.

Butler went on to finish the loss with 28 points on 20 field-goal attempts. That’s tied for the fifth-most points Butler has scored in a game this season and it’s the second most shots he has taken in a game this season.

Butler also posted a usage rate (an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while on the court) of 28.6 percent in Saturday’s loss. That’s the highest usage rate he has finished a game with since that Dec. 16 win over the Bulls.

The Heat fell to 8-3 this season when Butler finishes a game with a usage rate of 25 percent or higher.

“It’s always frustrating to not win,” Butler said. “I feel like the last six have been very, very, very frustrating. I don’t know what else to say.”

Jaquez returned from injury and was immediately relied on to play important minutes.

Jaquez, the Heat’s rookie revelation, was plugged right back into the Heat’s mix to log 23:41 off the bench in Saturday’s loss. He played 7:33 in the fourth quarter.

After missing the last six games with a strained left groin, Jaquez returned to contribute six points on 1-of-3 shooting from the field, 1-of-2 shooting on threes and 3-of-4 shooting from the foul line, one rebound, four assists, two steals and two blocks on Saturday.

“There are definitely some things defensively that he needs to fast track on and he knows that,” Spoelstra said when asked about Jaquez’s return. “But offensively, you can definitely see some of the intangibles that he brings. He just has a knack for the play, a knack for getting us some rim pressure and we need a lot more of that.”

There were the usual post-ups and cuts to the basket for Jaquez, but his highlight of the day came on the defensive end.

With Anunoby going up for a dunk attempt midway through the second quarter, Jaquez met him at the rim and blocked it to begin a transition sequence that ended with an Adebayo dunk.

“I felt great. I felt at 100 percent,” Jaquez said following his return. “[Heat senior director of rehabilitation] Jeff Ruiz, I’ve been working with him every single day. Se we’re very confident in the work that we put in and I felt great tonight.”

After the Heat’s recent trade for Rozier, it was guard Josh Richardson who was the rotation regular who wasn’t in the rotation with the roster finally whole.

It marked Richardson’s first DNP-CD (did not play, coach’s decision) of the season, as he played in each of the first 36 games he was available for before not getting in Saturday’s contest.

Richardson, 30, is averaging 9.6 points, 2.7 rebounds and 2.5 assists per game while shooting 43.2 percent from the field and 33.3 percent on threes this season.

The other available and active Heat player who was not used on Saturday was Thomas Bryant.

Orlando Robinson and Nikola Jovic were also out of the Heat’s rotation against the Knicks, but entered to play the final 1:11 of the lopsided defeat.

As for Rozier, he closed Saturday’s loss with 10 points on 4-of-12 shooting from the field, 0-of-2 shooting on threes and 2-of-2 shooting from the foul line, five rebounds and seven assists in 32 minutes.

Rozier is shooting just 10 of 33 (30.3 percent) from the field and 2 of 11 (18.2 percent) from three-point range in three games since being dealt to the Heat.

“He’ll figure it out,” Spoelstra said of Rozier. “He’s trying to fit in and I get that. We’re all saying the same thing. We want Terry to be Terry. He’s going to unlock other things for us.”

With the Heat healthy, it didn’t need to make any of its two-way contract players active for Saturday’s game.

That’s noteworthy because for teams like the Heat, which are carrying 14 players on standard contracts instead of the maximum of 15, the three two-way players on the roster can be active for no more than 90 regular-season NBA games combined.

Heat two-way contract players Jamal Cain has been active for 26 games, RJ Hampton has been active for 17 games and Cole Swider has been active for 19 games this season.

That means, with 36 regular-season games still left to play, the Heat can only make its three two-way contract players active for a combined total of 28 games the rest of the way. Two-way deals do not come with playoff eligibility.

The three players on two-way contracts usually can be active for as many as 50 NBA regular-season games each, but that’s only for teams with 15 players on standard deals. The Heat has played with 14 players on standard contracts since the start of the season.

The good news for the Heat is that the total number of regular-season games its three two-way contract players can be active for immediately jumps from 90 to 150 games if Miami signs a 15th player at any point this season.

After Saturday’s loss, Orlando Robinson, Hampton and Swider left the Heat to join the organization’s developmental affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce, for a G League assignment.