With two straight losses and Bam’s status up in air, Heat looking to avoid late-season meltdown

Just one week ago, the Miami Heat was in the middle of its longest winning streak of the season and Bam Adebayo had just turned in one of the greatest individual regular-season performances in NBA history in the form of an 83-point game. But things have taken a turn for the worse for the Heat since then, suffering its most lopsided loss of the season in Tuesday night’s 136-106 defeat at the hands of the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center with Adebayo sidelined because of right calf tightness. As the regular season winds down and the possibility of again needing to qualify for the playoffs through the NBA’s play-in tournament still looms, the Heat has now lost two straight games after its season-best seven-game winning streak. “All of these emotions, there’s a lot of disappointment and anger and frustration when you lose a game like this,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after Tuesday’s defeat in Charlotte. “But then there’s a flip side when you get a great win, a collective win, you feel a deeper sense of gratification. Everybody is playing for something right now that we’ll be playing in the next week, and I think that’s good.” The Heat’s next five games come against teams currently with a winning record. In fact, all five of the teams entered Wednesday at least 15 games above. 500. The Heat, which has 13 regular-season games left to play, begins this tough stretch on Thursday against the Los Angeles Lakers at Kaseya Center (8 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network Sun). The Heat then takes on the Rockets in Houston on Saturday, hosts the San Antonio Spurs on Monday and travels to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers in back-to-back games on March 25 and 27. To avoid things from snowballing in the wrong direction, the Heat needs to be much better than it was in the second half of Tuesday’s loss to the Hornets. After a competitive first half that included 19 lead changes and 10 ties, the Hornets dominated the Heat 77-49 in the second half to turn a back-and-forth game into a 30-point blowout win. Without Adebayo anchoring the defense, the Heat allowed the Hornets to score at a rate of 128.3 points per 100 possessions on Tuesday. It marked the Heat’s third-worst single game defensive rating of the season, falling to 2-14 this season when allowing its opponent to score more than 120 points per 100 possessions. It didn’t help that the Heat also struggled to make shots, finishing just 7 of 36 (19.4%) on threes in Tuesday’s loss. Miami shot only 3 of 20 (15%) from three-point range during its rough second half. “I mean, that goes without saying,” Spoelstra said when asked if the Heat missed Adebayo in Tuesday’s defeat. “But look, you deal with the hand you’re dealt. Through three quarters, I thought it was a very competitive game. Was it going perfect for us? No. Was it going perfect for them? No. “But it was going back and forth, back and forth, just two teams competing and both teams knowing what was at stake. And then they had the massive response to start that fourth quarter, and we just didn’t respond the way we’re capable of and the way we need to.” The Heat played without Adebayo for the first time since Dec. 27 on Tuesday. It marked the ninth game that he has missed this season, ending his string of 36 straight games played. The Heat has now been outscored by 3.6 points per 100 possessions without Adebayo on the court this season. With Adebayo on the court, Miami has outscored opponents by a dominant eight points per 100 possessions this season. “Obviously, he’s our anchor on defense,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said when asked about Adebayo’s absence. “Having him communicate, being the anchor on that side of the floor. Obviously, we missed that tonight. And then being able to just get stabilized and stuff on the other side of the ball.” The Heat needs Adebayo back sooner rather than later, with the injury report for Thursday’s game against the Lakers expected to be released by Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. With less than four weeks left in the regular season, the Heat faces the real possibility of again needing to take part in the play-in tournament after qualifying for the playoffs through the play-in in each of the last three seasons. The play-in tourney features the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference, and the Heat enters Wednesday in seventh place in the Eastern Conference standings. The Heat needs to finish among the East’s top six teams to clinch a playoff spot and avoid the play-in tournament. “You don’t want to get overwhelmed by what other teams are doing because it really just matters what we’re doing and what we’re bringing to take care of our own business,” Spoelstra said. “But it is fun, this time of year. The East is extremely competitive. When you’re training in the summer, you’re really hoping for these kinds of opportunities. When games have this much meaning, both teams know what’s going on. Games are really competitive. That hopefully brings out a higher level out of our team.” The seventh-place Heat (38-31) enters Wednesday one loss behind the sixth-place Orlando Magic (38-30) and two losses behind the fifth-place Toronto Raptors (38-29) in the East. While Toronto has won the first meetings between the Raptors and Heat this season, the head-to-head tiebreaker is still up in the air because the Heat and Raptors face off two more times in Toronto on April 7 and 9. But the Magic has already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat after sweeping the five-game regular-season series against Miami. The seventh-place Heat also enters Wednesday tied in the loss column with the eight-place Atlanta Hawks (37-31) and one loss ahead of the ninth-place Philadelphia 76ers (37-32). The head-to-head tiebreakers between the Heat and 76ers and Heat and Hawks are still undecided. According to Basketball Reference’s playoff probabilities report, the Heat entered Wednesday with a 47.9% chance of finishing with a top-six seed in the East to make the playoffs without needing to take part in the play-in tournament. So, essentially a toss-up. “This is what you want as competitors, and you develop collective character from meeting the challenge,” Spoelstra said. “We did not meet the challenge tonight, we did not meet the challenge against Orlando [on Saturday] for large parts of that game. And we have to find a way to do it on Thursday night [against the Lakers].”