Miami come back to defeat Detroit at home

The Miami Heat hosted the Detroit Pistons at the FTX Arena and were able to pull out a tough 105-98 victory. They now have a 25-9 (.735) record at home, which is the best in the Eastern Conference, and a 2.5 game lead on the Milwaukee Bucks for the 1st seed.

Despite their record and the fact that they were playing with out no.1 pick Cade Cunningham, the Detroit Pistons played an incredible game on both ends of the court. Their physicality was proving difficult for the Heat to contain and it eventually led to an opponent season-high 19-0 run to end the 3rd quarter and a 73-68 deficit heading into the 4th.

Per usual, the Heat got a huge boost from the best scoring bench in the NBA with 29 points from Tyler Herro and 16 HUGE 4th quarter points from Max Strus, and he opened up the quarter with 13 straight points. Miami doesn’t win this game with out those contributions as Jimmy Butler was struggling early and had to sit out the rest of the 2nd half with and ankle injury and Bam Adebayo was in foul trouble for the majority of this game.

It’s safe to safe Strus saved the Heat in this game. He replaced a cold Duncan Robinson towards the end of that atrocious third quarter and he completely turned the game around at the start of the fourth. He would go on to score the first 13 points for Miami and give them exactly the boost they needed to get out of the funk they were in for the last seven minutes of the third quarter. Herro and Adebayo would take care of the rest down the stretch for the victory. Bam finished the game with 16 points, 8 rebounds and 3 assists.

Now this game was obviously far from perfect as it looked like it was going to be one of the worst losses of the season for a while there. One of the reasons for that was the poor play from Dewayne Dedmon. Now I don’t want to bash on the Mechanic, but this was one of his worst performances of the season for him. Dedmon finished with 2 points, 4 rebound, 1 assist, 3 fouls and was a -23 in his 14 minutes. He just did not have it tonight, but I expect a bounce back performance from the veteran big man. Kyle Lowry played a below average game. He drew some important charges in this game and his defense has been solid overall, but he struggled to get anything going on the offensive side. We’ve seen him score single digit points plenty of times this season, but high assist numbers usually follow suit and he only had four dimes tonight.

A lot of credit needs to be given to the Detroit Pistons, who have been playing their best basketball of the season over the past few weeks and continued that trend despite the absence of Cunningham. I really liked what I saw from Isaiah Livers, who put on a clinic throughout this game with 16 points on 6-for-7 in his 31 minutes. He provided steady offensive production while also being a scrappy defender.

Jerami Grant (22), Marvin Bagley (13) and Saddiq Bey (13) would be the only other double digit scorers for the Pistons as they just did not have enough offense without their star rookie to close out the Heat.

I mentioned it earlier, but Butler was definitely struggling tonight and even before he twisted his ankle he was having trouble gaining any sort of momentum in this game. So, there is definitely some concern Butler’s recent play and his inability to stay healthy this season, but it’s hard for me to doubt him when it matters most.

Now the Miami Heat have two days off before the Oklahoma City Thunder come to town on Friday March 18th for the final game of their home stand. With the playoffs just a few weeks away, the Heat will have to find a way keep their key players healthy while holding on to that top seed in the Eastern Conference.