Rough road: Heat's struggle away from home continues

BOSTON — Spend just a few minutes with the Heat, especially after a dud performance like the one they put up on Sunday here at TD Garden, a 91-72 blowout loss to the Celtics, and you’ll surely discover that there is something to be figured out with this team. Exactly what needs figuring out, though, is somewhat of a mystery, and with just 25 days remaining until their season ends, the Heat are running out of time to solve it.

The facts are plain. A win in Portland in their first game after the All-Star break was the Heat’s ninth straight victory, and they were then 28-7. Since then, Miami has gone just 9-7, with the loss in Boston surpassing last week’s blowout at the hands of Oklahoma City as the Heat’s worst loss of the season. Miami shot just 34.8 percent here on Sunday, they were just 7-for-17 from the free-throw line, scored just 12 points in the third quarter and allowed Boston’s Rajon Rondo a dominating triple-double, as the Celtics shot 47.1 percent from the floor. The Heat have lost seven of their last 10 road games and are just 16-12 away from home.

After the game, coach Erik Spoelstra was clearly annoyed by his team’s effort. That’s to be expected. But worse, Spoelstra doesn’t seem sure of what’s wrong with his team.

“It’s not about what we say right now,” Spoelstra said. “It’s not about any kind of team meeting, any kind of talk. It’s not about a response to the media. This game was unacceptable. We will fix it, together, collectively. We’re not happy about it, but we have not been able to come up with the answer on the road—particularly in the third quarter. We fell prey to that again tonight. We will figure it out, somehow, this group together, us in that locker room, we will figure it out.”

It’s a long list of issues. Spoelstra points to the third quarter, and that’s a good place to start because, although the Heat are fourth in the league in scoring, they came into Sunday’s game just 16th in third-quarter points, at 23.8 per game. They have scored 18.8 points in the third quarter over their last four games, and were outscored 31-12 by Boston coming out of halftime.

But it’s not just third-quarter effort. According to small forward Shane Battier, the Heat seem to put out a better overall effort when they’re at home, and that translates to the easy stuff—more free throws, more fast breaks, more points in the paint and more overall aggression. Coming into Sunday’s game here, according to Teamrankings.com, the Heat get 44.1 points in the paint per game at home, and only 41.8 on the road. They got 20.1 percent of their points from free throws at home, 18.7 percent on the road. On Sunday, they got just 40 points in the paint and 9.7 percent of their points from the free-throw line.

“Look at the numbers, our points in the paint are much higher at home,” Battier said. “Our jump shots are way down at home. Our free throws are up at home. And that’s when we play our best basketball, when we are in transition, we get to the line, we get points in the paint. For whatever reason, those things are down on the road. If we want to play better on the road, that is a good place to start.”

There’s something else at work, too—on the road, star forward LeBron James said, the Heat have been too quick to get down on themselves. When they miss shots, rather than working hard on defense to create transition points, the Heat sort of give up.

“We have got to make shots in this league, especially against a team that is as efficient as the Celtics are,” James said. “When they make shots, you have got to be able to make shots as well. But at the same time, you have got to be able to defend. For us, it always kind of flows that way. When we don’t make shots, offensively, it kind of hurts our defense, we don’t play up to our ability—we don’t get fast-break points, we are not energetic, it kind of works like that for us.”

The Heat are a dominant team at home, with a 21-2 record, and there’s no question how good they can be. But there is a real question about their mediocrity on the road—and why they have not yet figured it out.