Takeaways from Heat’s loss in Dallas, and what went wrong offensively in the first half

The Miami Heat’s 2021 is off to an inefficient start.

The Heat (2-3) opened the year with an ugly 93-83 loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Friday at American Airlines Center.

Miami’s offense, which was a top-10 unit last season, struggled in the defeat. The Heat scored 83 points on 37.2 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-33 shooting on threes.

“Our game isn’t built on whether we make threes or not, only,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after the loss. “Basketball is much more complex than that. And we didn’t do enough things to put ourselves in a position to really deserve to win.”

Without the Heat’s usually efficient offense, it couldn’t keep up with the Mavericks. Dallas (2-3) led by as many as 24 points points, and outscored Miami 36-21 from three-point range.

“They got hot and we didn’t,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “So we got to come out with the energy that we had when we played Milwaukee the second time [on Wednesday], and I think it would have been a different outcome.”

The Heat managed to cut the Mavericks’ lead to nine points with 1:10 to play behind a strong fourth quarter, but it was too late for Miami to complete the comeback.

There was one bit of good news for the Heat on Friday: All-Star wing Jimmy Butler returned after missing the previous two games because of a sprained right ankle.

The Heat now returns to Miami for a quick two-game homestand that begins Monday against the Oklahoma City Thunder. It has been an inconsistent start to the season for the Heat, which has not been able to string together multiple wins yet.

Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Mavericks:

The Heat’s first-half shooting performance was too inefficient to overcome.

The Heat entered halftime down by 15 points after a rough first half on the offensive end. Miami scored just 31 points on 9-of-36 (25 percent) shooting from the field and 0-of-14 shooting on threes in the first two quarters Friday.

It marks the Heat’s lowest scoring half since totaling 31 points in the first half of a loss to the Boston Celtics on Nov. 28, 2016.

In addition, the Heat’s 0-of-14 start from three-point range is tied for the worst three-point shooting start to a game in franchise history since the stat began being tracking in the 1996-97 season, according to Fox Sports Sun.

It got better for the Heat in the second half, as Miami scored 52 points on 47.6 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-19 shooting on threes in the final two quarters on Friday.

Miami posted a dismal offensive rating of 64.6 in the first half before turning it around to score at a pace of 106.1 points per 100 possessions in the second half. But the first-half struggles were just too much to overcome.

Even sharpshooter Duncan Robinson had a rough night, as he scored five points on 1-of-8 shooting on threes.

“We’ve won games without shots going in,” Robinson said. “So that’s where discipline comes in to continue to understand what a good shot is, what’s in our wheelhouse and what we need to work for. So you’re going to have games like this where shots don’t go in and you’re still going to have to find a way. We weren’t able to do that tonight.”

Friday is just the second game since the start of the 2017-18 season that the Heat has scored 83 points or fewer in, with the other coming in a 106-82 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 6, 2019.

Butler was not sharp in his return from injury.

Butler contributed to the Heat’s shooting struggles Friday, finishing with two points on 0-of-6 shooting from the field and 2-of-3 shooting from the foul line. He also recorded three rebounds and two assists in 27 minutes.

It’s just the second game in Butler’s career that he has played more than 25 minutes and not made a shot from the field in.

Friday is also just the second complete game Butler has played in this season after being held out of the second half of Miami’s second game and then missing the next two because of his ankle injury.

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With Butler back and Spoelstra still working to find the right rotation combination, the Heat used its fifth different starting lineup in the fifth game of the season.

Miami started Tyler Herro, Butler, Robinson, Andre Iguodala and Adebayo against the Mavericks. It’s the first time in franchise history that the Heat has used five different starting lineups in the season’s first five games.

Herro, Butler, Robinson and Adebayo opened the season as starters, but Iguodala is the new addition to the group after making his first start as a member of the Heat in Wednesday’s win over the Milwaukee Bucks.

Iguodala’s spot, the “power forward” role, in the starting lineup is the one that has changed the most to begin the season. Moe Harkless, Meyers Leonard and now Iguodala have all already started in that spot in the fist five games.

It will be interesting to see if Iguodala can stick as a starter, with the Heat hoping to get the 3-and-D skills that Jae Crowder was able to provide from that starting frontcourt spot alongside Adebayo.

On Friday, Iguodala finished with three points on 1-of-3 shooting on threes and two rebounds in 13 minutes. The 2015 NBA Finals MVP also spent a chunk of his time on the court defending Mavericks star Luka Doncic.

“I mean it’s just natural playing basketball, for me,” Iguodala said of adjusting to a starting role. “But at times I go through phases where maybe I overthink something too much or try to make sure our rhythm is perfect. Instead, sometimes the game calls for me to be selfish. So it’s just a work in progress, getting out the kinks, trying to find different things in different games.”

The Heat’s bench rotation on Friday included: Avery Bradley, Goran Dragic, Precious Achiuwa, Kelly Olynyk, Harkless and Kendrick Nunn. Miami used an 11-man rotation in Dallas.

The Heat threw different looks at Doncic throughout the game, but Doncic still found a way to be effective.

Iguodala started on Doncic, and Butler, Bradley and Harkless also spent time as his primary defender. The 21-year-old Slovenian star finished with 27 points on 9-of-22 shooting, 15 rebounds and seven assists.

Doncic is off to a slow start this season, by his standards. He entered Friday averaging 23.8 points on 43.8 percent shooting from the field and 2-of-21 shooting on threes, 5.8 rebounds and 6.3 assists this season.

The Heat’s game in Dallas marked the team’s first road trip outside of Florida since March, and a lot has changed since then.

To be exact, the Heat’s last trip that took it outside of Florida was for a March 6 game against the New Orleans Pelicans and a March 8 game against the Washington Wizards.

Then the 2019-20 season was suspended on March 11 amid the COVID-19 pandemic before play resumed about four months later in the NBA’s Walt Disney World bubble in Lake Buena Vista.

The Heat’s one preseason road game this season was also played in Florida against the Toronto Raptors, which have been temporarily relocated to Tampa because of COVID-19-related travel restrictions in Canada. Miami’s lone regular-season road game prior to Friday was the opener against the Orlando Magic.

“Similar to our other trips,” Spoelstra said Friday when asked how the team’s first out-of-state trip in 10 months had gone. “They’re pretty uneventful. You get on a plane, you land, you take a bus, go to your hotel, order room service and that’s it. It’s a little bit different than our NBA experience in a typical year. But that’s just the deal, and we’re grateful that we have an opportunity to continue to play.”

Road trips are now governed by the NBA’s new COVID-19 health and safety protocols. One of the many guidelines in place requires every member of a team’s traveling party to wear a mask at all times for the duration of the flight/bus ride and outside their individual hotel rooms unless they’re eating or drinking something.