Heat avoid worst loss of the season against the Rockets

This game was extremely close to becoming another worst loss of the season for the Miami Heat. This team always finds a way to play down to their competition and it's no different when it comes to the worst team in the league, the Houston Rockets.

Luckily, the Heat were able to squeak by with a 97-95 win over the Rockets, who are also one of the worst defensive teams in the league. They were down by as many as five points with under four minutes remaining in the game, but with the help of Jimmy Butler down the stretch Miami was able to escape with the victory.

The first half of this game was all Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. Both players had 16 points at the half and they were the only ones that were able to produce any sort of offense in the opening 24 minutes. Bam looked like the All-Star he's been all season as there was nothing the Rockets could do to slow him down early on. Only thing that stopped his strong start was foul trouble as he finished the game with just 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting with nine rebounds, three assists, two steals and one block.

As for Tyler, he was absolutely on one the entire night and was the main reason Miami was able to get the victory. He scored 31 points on an efficient 11-of-20 shooting from the field and 5-of-10 from deep to go with nine rebounds, eight assists, one steal and one block. He was finally able to get his shooting going consistently throughout all 48 minutes of this game. Herro was also able to hit a clutch three in the final moments to give Miami a 93-91 lead before Jimmy took it the rest of the way.

Love seeing this kind of response from our two young stars after a trade deadline that saw the Heat come away with nothing. Of course that is going to be extremely disappointing for a fan base that is used to seeing their organization in "win now" mode every year. At least we have a superstar star (Jimmy) who takes over when it matters most, a perennial All-Star and yearly DPOY candidate (Bam) and a rising young talent (Tyler) who has the kind of scoring potential that fits perfectly with your top two players. Things can be a lot worse for this team.

We are still going to get games like this where the team struggles on offense (41.5 FG%, 31.6 3PT%) against the likes of the Houston Rockets defense that allowed 130, 140 and 153 points prior to this game, but the talent is there. Especially at the top of the roster.

Now the front office just needs to do their job to get the right complementary pieces around them to compete. Whether that's realistic or not is a topic for another day. Let's just take this victory and move on to the next one.