Heat looking to move past ‘very bad loss’ to short-handed Cavs: ‘We got to turn the page quickly’

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Heat looking to move past ‘very bad loss’ to short-handed Cavs: ‘We got to turn the page quickly’

Miami Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. (11) walks off the court with his teammates after losing his NBA game against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the second half of their NBA game at Kaseya Center on Nov. 12, 2025, in Miami.

Photo by Matias J. Ocner

mocner@miamiherald.com

Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra issued a warning to his team before Wednesday’s game against a depleted Cleveland Cavaliers roster.

“We’re not one of those teams that can overlook anybody,” Spoelstra said during his pregame media session. “We haven’t really proven anything yet.”

But Heat players apparently didn’t get the message, even while being short-handed itself and remaining without its leading duo of Bam Adebayo (left big toe sprain) and Tyler Herro (left ankle surgery) on Wednesday.

Just 48 hours after earning a quality overtime win over a relatively whole Cavaliers team on Monday, the Heat fell to an undermanned Cavaliers squad resting stars Donovan Mitchell and Evan Mobley, 130-116, on Wednesday night at Kaseya Center. The Cavaliers were also without Darius Garland (toe injury management), Max Strus (left foot surgery) and Jaylon Tyson (concussion).

“They had a lot of guys missing, and I think that may have gotten to us,” Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said, with the Heat (7-5) now heading to New York to face the Knicks (7-4) on Friday at Madison Square Garden (7 p.m., Prime Video) in an NBA Cup group-play game that also counts toward both teams’ regular-season record “Great teams, it doesn’t matter who’s out there, you’ve got to put your best foot forward. Obviously, we just didn’t do that tonight.”

The loss snapped the Heat’s three-game winning streak, as Miami closed its four-game homestand at 3-1.

With the Cavaliers’ top two scorers out for rest on Wednesday, players such as Jarrett Allen, Lonzo Ball and Craig Porter Jr. stepped into bigger roles. Allen, who entered averaging 15 points per game this season, scored a season-high 30 points; Ball, who entered averaging 5.1 points per game this season, totaled a season-high 15 points; and Craig Porter Jr., who entered averaging 4.1 points per game, scored a season-high 19 points.

“Very bad loss. I mean, that’s a very bad loss,” Heat guard Norman Powell emphasized. “They’re a good team. But when they’re sitting their starters, their go-to guys, that’s when we got to put our stamp on the game and not give them any life. So it’s a bad loss for us, especially coming off a game like we had earlier against them.

“We got to be better. It doesn’t matter who is suiting up. We got to focus on what we need to focus on and play our brand of basketball, no matter who we’re lined up against.”

Miami Heat guard Norman Powell (24) competes for the ball against Cleveland Cavaliers forward Larry Nance Jr. (22) and guard Tyrese Proctor (24) in the second half of their NBA game at Kaseya Center on Nov. 12, 2025, in Miami. Photo by Matias J. Ocner mocner@miamiherald.com

The Heat didn’t play its game after beginning Wednesday as the highest scoring team in the NBA (125.5 points per game) and playing at the league’s fastest pace (106.6 possessions per 48 minutes).

The pace was actually there, playing Wednesday’s game at a fast pace of 109 possessions per 48 minutes. The Heat also made a high percentage of its shots, shooting 47.9% from the field and 15 of 37 (40.5%) from three-point range.

The problem is the Heat was too sloppy for any of that to matter, as it committed a season-high 21 turnovers that the Cavaliers turned into 29 points. Those empty possessions led to Miami scoring nine fewer points than its season average on Wednesday.

“I don’t think our offense was a problem at all,” Powell said. “I mean, we’re 47% [from the field], 40% from the three. They had 31 free throws and we had 13. We had 21 turnovers, and they got 29 points off of those turnovers. I think that’s the game right there.”

Before losing to the short-handed Cavaliers on Wednesday, the Heat held an impressive 82-15 regular-season record since the start of the 2020-21 season when shooting 47% or better from the field and 40% or better on threes. But the Heat’s turnover issues negated the fact that its offense was otherwise efficient on Wednesday.

“We had a lot of turnovers on threading the needle or jumping in the air against a team that’s elite at finding deflections,” Spoelstra said. “And you just never know where those possessions could lead to better rhythm. If you do your proper fundamentals, proper spacing, get the ball where it needs to go, the ball moves, and all of a sudden you get a wide open shot, now that can be momentum going your way. Instead, it ends up being a truncated drive, like where we had like two good possessions and all of a sudden two turnovers. Now we’re not in rhythm, they’re grinding, staying in the game.”

The Heat’s defense also helped fuel its struggles against the Cavaliers on Wednesday.

Not only did the Heat commit enough fouls for the Cavaliers to finish with a big 31-13 advantage in free-throw attempts, but Miami also again struggled to rebound. The Cavaliers outscored the Heat 26-12 in second-chance points behind a 15-9 edge in offensive rebounds.

Keeping opponents off the offensive glass has been a problem for the Heat since Adebayo went out with a toe injury. With Adebayo missing the last four games, the Heat has posted the league’s 27th-ranked defensive rebounding (the percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs) at 61.6% during that four-game stretch after recording the NBA’s 14th-ranked defensive rebounding percentage at 69.8 percent with Adebayo available for the first eight games of the season.

“The things that we could have controlled would have been taking care of the ball better, the cuts that led to rebounding again, and then the fouling,” Spoelstra said. “The fouling potentially could have been a matter of just, not fatigue. Our guys are in tremendous condition. But from the other night, an emotional game. And then here we’re just a step slow it seemed like in a lot of those situations in the second half.”

Jaqeuz added: “That is a recipe for defeat right there. A lot of fouling, a lot of turnovers. It’s tough to win when you got 20-plus turnovers. And I don’t know how many times we sent them to the line, but I know it was a lot. It’s tough to win like that. We just got to be better, we got to be more solid on defense. There are a lot of things we still need to work on, still need to grow from.”

As Spoelstra said before Wednesday’s loss, the Heat isn’t “one of those teams that can overlook anybody.”

That could again be tested on Friday in New York. The Heat may be facing a Knicks team missing two-time NBA All-Star guard Jalen Brunson, who suffered an ankle injury during Wednesday’s loss to the Orlando Magic.

“We got to turn the page quickly,” Powell said, with the Heat set to face a Knicks team it defeated in the teams’ first meeting of the season 115-107 at Kaseya Center on Oct. 26. “We’ve got an in-season tournament game against a Knicks team that is going to be hungry. They’re playing well. We beat them here, so I know they want to protect home court.”

This story was originally published November 13, 2025 at 11:17 AM.