Miami Heat’s Tale of Two Different Defenses

By Richard Nurse @blackirishpr on November 2, 2014

For as proud as coach Erik Spoelstra can be about his team jumping out to a 2-0 start on his birthday, the Jekyll and Hyde act of the Miami Heat defense has to be putting more than a few grays in his 44-year-old, jet black hair.

When you look at the stats, the seven-steal increase — from nine to 16 — looks like a major game to game improvement, until you realize that the Heat used this second outing to give up more points to the Philadelphia 76ers than the Washington Wizards. Keep in mind Philly is the same team that had their head coach Brett Brown say that his young guys didn’t have it in them to play an entire 48 minutes.

On the upside, Miami started out the game with their hands and feet active enough to keep themselves in the passing lanes. Unfortunately, that quickly deteriorated into slow steps and lazy rotations. It was so bad that they were constantly getting attacked at the basket because players could not keep the men that they were defending in front of them. And none of this includes the lapses that gave up wide-open threes.

This would usually be deemed as simple miscommunications that most teams could blame on all of the new face. However, that is difficult to say when it is the same exact problem that they experienced the year prior. In other words, there is no way that the Heat should be giving up 81 points — by the third quarter — to an offensively challenged team that didn’t put up that much, in total, the night before.

The only positive that coach Spo can take from that end of the floor is that a combination of defensive adjustments and forcing uncomfortable shots caused a fourth quarter of 15 points and only four field goals made for the 76ers.

Of course, the lack of effort could just be another case of Miami playing down to the competition, but we all witnessed how their disrespect for the process of defeating the bad teams eventually snowballed into bad habits that got them destroyed by the good ones.

Why else do you think the NBA Championship went parading down San Antonio’s River Walk?

Richard Nurse is a writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @blackirishpr or add him to your network on Google.