Heat’s Norman Powell says ‘I feel like I’m a starter,’ but ‘going to accept’ move to the bench

While the Miami Heat tries to move up the Eastern Conference standings and evade the NBA’s play-in tournament, Heat guard Norman Powell is still adjusting to his recent move to a bench role. Powell is the Heat’s leading scorer at 22.3 points per game and was the team’s lone All-Star this season, but he has now played two of the last three games as a reserve after starting in the first 49 appearances of his first season with Miami. These two games as a reserve mark Powell’s first two regular-season games off the bench since April 12, 2024. “Just playing my game,” Powell said of his transition to a new role after playing his second game as a reserve this season in Thursday night’s 134-126 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers at Kaseya Center. “Those decisions and things are above me. I can’t control that. I focus on what I can control. Be a good teammate, be professional, continue to have confidence in myself, go out there and play the way I need to play in whatever minutes I do get and figure it out in how we can make it work.” The Heat, which is on a three-game losing skid, has lost in Powell’s first two games off the bench. He has averaged 20 points while shooting 14 of 28 (50 percent) from the field and 2 of 10 (20 percent) from three-point range in those two games as a reserve. Between those two games off the bench — Saturday’s loss to the Orlando Magic and Thursday’s loss to the Lakers — Powell started Tuesday’s loss to the Charlotte Hornets with two starters (Bam Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins) sidelined because of injuries. “I’ve been through every single role, position in this 11-year career that I’ve had,” Powell said, with the Heat now taking its three-game skid to Houston for a matchup against the Rockets on Saturday (8 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun). “So, it’s nothing new to me. I just put my hard hat on and go to work. Whatever role it is, I try to put myself in position to help this team win games.” Powell, 32, has made clear he views himself as an NBA starter and appeared to prove he is an NBA starter after averaging 23 points per game on 47.4 percent shooting from the field and 39.6 percent from three-point range before the All-Star break to make his first NBA All-Star Game. But Powell’s production has dipped since the break, averaging 18 points per game while shooting 46.2 percent from the field and 28.6 percent from behind the arc in seven games. That downturn paired with the fact that Powell was unavailable for the entirety of the Heat’s recent seven-game winning streak due to a groin injury helped lead to his move to the bench. Has Powell, 32, received any clarity on his role moving forward for the final three weeks of the regular season? “We talked,” said Powell, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent this upcoming offseason unless he signs an extension with the Heat before hitting free agency. “Game to game, I don’t know. That’s a question with Spo. But we talked about how it’s going to be going forward. We’re treating every game like a playoff game because it’s so important. Whatever role you’re put in, the focus has to be going out there and winning the game no matter what. That’s my focus. “I feel like I’m a starter. I’ve worked to be in that role. But if the team feels that me coming off the bench some games or whatever it is based on a matchup is going to put us in position to win games, I’m going to accept the role and go out there and play basketball.” Playing Powell off the bench and keeping guard Tyler Herro in the starting unit also allows the Heat to stagger their minutes since the results have not been positive when they’ve shared the court this season. While their minutes together have been limited due to injuries, the Heat has been outscored by 3.1 points per 100 possessions in the 207 minutes Herro and Powell have played together this season. “The skill level with both of them on the court, that’ll work itself out. We need it,” Spoelstra said of the Herro-Powell pairing. “We need all the offensive firepower we can have right now. It’s tough to assess. And I get it, because that is a storyline since they haven’t had a full body of games and a season together. That’s behind my order of priorities. Because if we’re defending the way we had been defending, and we’re getting stuff in the open court, and we’re getting in transition, in my view, it just tends to work itself out. “If we’re just playing half-court basketball, that’s not us anyway. And we’ve been taking the ball out of the net too often these last three games, and that has never been our recipe. I don’t care who’s on the floor. The offense won’t look spectacular if we’re not really defending and getting our fair share of stops that lead to open court, lead to these semi-transition opportunities. That’s the Miami Heat 25-26 at their best.” The Heat now wants Powell to be at his best, whether he’s in the starting lineup or playing as a reserve. It’s worth noting that Powell has actually averaged more minutes in his two games off the bench (31.8 minutes per game) than he has in his 50 starts (30 minutes per game) this season. “Obviously, the man was an All-Star. So we understand he can get it going,” Adebayo said of Powell. “For me, it’s always the other side. I always want my teammates scoring. Some of us are just built to do that. For me, it’s doing the little things on the other side. Communication, being in your right spots. And on the other end, it’s sacrificing cuts every once in a while. “And that’s everybody, it’s not just Norm. I mean, Norm sacrifices. He’s coming off the bench. And he’s figuring out his role. But he’s still playing 32 minutes. So it’s like, it doesn’t matter about coming off the bench at the end of the day because you’re getting like Lou Will minutes. You’re coming off the bench, but you’re still playing 30-plus.” Time is running out for the Heat and Powell to figure things out, though. With just 12 games left on its regular-season schedule, the Heat (38-32) faces the very real possibility of needing to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tourney for the fourth straight season. Miami enters Friday in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, and the play-in features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference. “You got to win games. We got 12 left,” Adebayo said. “And it’s frustrating because, like I said, we’ve beaten some of the top teams in each conference. But we’ve also, at some point, lost to the worst teams in both conferences. That’s frustrating because if you could do the games that you lost to the worst teams, if you could do those games over and win those games, we wouldn’t even be in this position. But this is where we are. And at some point we have to hit another get and get out of this play-in.”