As the Miami Heat are looking to turn around the season, the team experienced another setback losing to the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday night, 125-91, marking their seventh straight defeat. While the Heat are trying to make a late playoff push, there is little time remaining in the season, but star Andrew Wiggins has a confident prediction on the chances relating to his new team.
It would be a disappointing finish for Wiggins as he scored eight points on three for eight footing from the field in 22 minutes of play, though it was enough to have the most points through the first 10 games with the franchise. That beats LeBron James in 2010 as while Wiggins looks to have a productive career with Miami, the focus now is on a turnaround as he says once the team gets “over the hump,” the group will be “right there” according to the team’s YouTube page.
“It’s everybody, I think it’s the whole team, you know, just doing it collectively and trying to figure it out together,” Wiggins said when asked if his voice is growing louder within the team. “You know, we figure it out, we go through all this stuff and once you get over that hump, you know, we’re going to be right there.”
“I mean, it’s still good spirits, good vibes around the team,” Wiggins continued. “You know, we all want the same thing, you know, which is to win, to see something positive in the outcome of these games. So as long as we keep the good vibes, keep that will to try to go there and stay competitive and win games, I feel like we’ll be alright.”
Heat’s Erik Spoelstra calls seventh straight loss “humbling”
As Wiggins looks to be more comfortable with the Heat since making his debut on Feb. 10 after the team traded Jimmy Butler to the Golden State Warriors, the rest of the unit has to gain their “competitive spirit” back. An aspect that head coach Erik Spoelstra pointed out as being lost in the frustrating loss to Memphis compared to Friday’s defeat to the Boston Celtics as he called Saturday’s performance a “humbling one.”
“We lost our competitive spirit there in the second half,” Spoelstra said. “Enough has been said in the locker room, but we have a certain standard of how we expect to play and compete. We did not meet that standard tonight. When we meet that standard, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to win, obviously, we’re struggling to figure out how to win games, but you know, last night [vs. Boston], we met a standard from a competitive standpoint tonight, tonight we did not.”
“We focus on the process,” Spoelstra continued. “It is said often and it can be a cliche, but in these moments, there’s no stronger truth than you have to stick to a process. We have a process of trying to build the necessary habits. None of us are taking this for granted. I mean, the vets that have been in our locker room for a long period of time, this is humbling, and we’re left with this reality of how difficult it is to win one game, more desperate to our souls to collectively figure out how to win one game, you know? And that’s where we are right now, part of this, we have to balance all of it.”
Heat’s Erik Spoelstra on what would “put a smile on a lot of our faces”
There’s no doubt that the Heat need their spirits raised after another loss where the team didn’t lead once in the contest, despite Memphis missing their top star in Ja Morant. However, there is 15 games left in the regular season as all it will take for Miami to get back on track is one win which would “put a smile on a lot of our faces” as said by Spoelstra.
“There’s a standard that we have to hold,” Spoelstra said. “There’s also our spirit that we have to keep staying the course and also finding collective joy through this process, all of that, all of it matters right now. It’s not going to be fun when you’re losing, that’s just the reality, but there can be joy in terms of competing together and playing well, and we’ve had stretches of that the last three weeks, even though we’ve been losing. So it’s a balance that we all have to strike. But again, a thing that would solve a lot of it would be getting just an incredible effort collectively to win one game, that would put a smile on a lot of our faces.”
Heat looking to “figure out” to get back “competitive spirit”
Tyler Herro would finish with a season-low eight points while Bam Adebayo had 18 and Kel’el Ware led the whole team with 19 points and 11 rebounds. Newcomer Kyle Anderson was also solid off the bench with 13 points, six rebounds, and five assists as he also had a positive approach.
“It’s not like the season’s over,” Anderson said. “Including myself, I don’t think we displayed [competitive spirit] tonight. Shame on us. We’ve addressed it as a team. We will figure it out the next game on Monday.”
At any rate, Miami is 29-38 which puts them ninth in the Eastern Conference as the team will try to prevent from being 10 games under .500 against the Jalen Brunson-less New York Knicks on Monday.
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