Miami heat take care of business at home to take 1-0 series lead

The Joel Embiid-less Philadelphia 76ers put up a fight, but they just didn’t have enough in the 2nd half to defeat our top seeded Miami Heat. The Heat win this game 106-92 and take a 1-0 series lead on the back of a supremely efficient night from Bam Adebayo, who just continues to look better and better as the playoffs go on, and the sharpshooting Tyler Herro. This is the type of Bam and Tyler we need showing up for Miami moving forward. Bam finished with 24 points on 8-of-10 shooting to go with 12 rebounds, four assists, two steals and one block while Tyler had a team-high 25 points on 9-of-17 shooting to go with seven assists and zero turnovers. You just love to see these two guys leading the way with Kyle Lowry out of the lineup and Jimmy Butler unable to make an impact offensively in the second half.

The Miami Heat defense was also a huge factor in this game as they made things extremely different for all the Sixers ball handlers. You had to know coming into this game that James Harden and Tyrese Maxey were going to be extremely important to their success while Embiid is sidelined. While there were some moments for both those players to shine in this one, they were inefficient for most of the night as they shot combined 11-of-28 to go with seven assists and seven turnovers. However, the player that proved to excel the most was Tobias Harris as he finished with 27 points on 11-of-18 shooting. His size and ability to get shots over Heat defenders was able to keep Philadelphia in this game until the third quarter. Eventually you could see the aggressiveness of Miami’s defense was wearing on the Sixers as they just couldn’t get anything going in the second half scoring just 41 points.

You also got an extremely strong performance from the bench as they outscored Phladelphia’s bench 42 to 21. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the Heat have a huge advantage in that department, especially with Embiid out, as it forces Deandre Jordan to move to the starting lineup and that just did not work for them tonight as he was a -22 in his 17 minutes tonight. Aside from that, Miami’s bench unit has been one of the best in the league all season long. Obviously a big load of that offense is carried by the 6MOY Tyler Herro, but you also have Caleb Martin, Victor Oladipo and Dewayne Dedmon, who played big minutes tonight.

Lets also give a shout out to the two guys who were originally two-way players for Miami, but are now starting in Game 1 of the Semi-finals of the playoffs, Max Strus and Gabe Vincent. They didn’t have huge impacts in this game offensively, but the improvements they have made in their game overall has given Spoelstra players that he can rely on in big moments. Speaking of players you can rely on in big moments, how about the effort and energy we are getting for PJ Tucker. I mean was this guy destined to play in a Miami Heat jersey or what! His defensive intensity and IQ are absolutely perfect for this team and I couldn’t be happier that Pat Riley was able to lure him away from the defending champion Milwaukee Bucks.

Now I know this Philly team will look a lot different once Joel Embiid comes back healthy, but I am extremely confident in this Miami Heat defense to get the job done. Next, we have Game 2 on Wednesday at the FTX Arena. Philadelphia will again be without Embiid, so I expect the Heat to take care of business and go up 2-0 in the series.