Miami’s loss to Golden State drops them to 39-33, putting them seventh in the East.

The Miami Heat dropped a crucial game Tuesday night as they lost to the Golden State Warriors inside the Kaseya Center, 113-92. Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra along with stars Bam Adebayo and Haywood Highsmith spoke after the painful game to the media to talk about their mindsets with 10 games left in the regular season with the team trying to solidify playoff position.

It was already going to be a tall task to take down the Warriors as the Heat were not only dealing with the continued absences of Tyler Herro, Kevin Love, and Duncan Robinson, but Jimmy Butler was ruled out with an illness just over an hour until tip-off. This prompted the team to roll out their 35th different starting lineup, which is a franchise record.

While the game was competitive in the first half, they fell off in the second as Spoelstra said to ClutchPoints that “our guys are not ignorant” and with a loss like this “it’s not because our guys don’t care.”

“Our guys understand, our guys are not ignorant and our guys are extremely competitive. A game like this, it’s not because our guys don’t care, that is not it. Our guys laid it out there, just couldn’t get enough momentum offensively, decision making, shotmaking, to keep it close,” Spoelstra said. “Defensively, I thought it was it was good until at a certain point we didn’t make shots and then our resolve weakened a little bit. And then Curry, Thompson, pretty much shut the door with those trees and their shot making that just kind of took the resolve and hope away from us those last four minutes.”

Adebayo says now every game is “must win” for Heat

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The Heat star in Adebayo led the way as he scored 24 points, collected nine rebounds, and recorded five assists. He would say after the contest that “every game at this point is must win” as they try to get out of contention for the play-in tournament and obtain a top six seed in the Eastern Conference.

“We take it game by game, I feel like every game at this point is must win,” Adebayo said. “And you start to understand it starts to become playoff time, so games start to become different even in the last 10 games in the regular season and games are starting to slow down. It’s gonna start to become possession by possession because we’re not the only team that wants to get out of the play-in, so you’ll start to see that shift.”

As for the game itself, even though they were short-handed, the Heat were keeping up with the pace the Warriors were flowing in through the first 24 minutes of the game as they were up two going into the break. While Adebayo has said before that poor shooting from Miami has led to the downwards trend of the defense, it was the shot-making of the famously named “Splash Brothers” in Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson that made a difference as he told ClutchPoints.

I think Klay [Thompson] was just hitting tough shots, him and Steph [Curry] down the stretch,” Adebayo said. “Obviously, those two guys generate a lot of attention, when you have that much attention and you’re making shots, it allows other guys to get going, get themselves involved in the game.”

Heat standout Haywood Highsmith on what went wrong in second half

One of the bright spots for the Heat was once again Haywood Highsmith who was already coming off an impressive two-way game in the victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers from last Sunday. Against the Warriors, he finished with 15 points while making six of his seven attempts from the field as he made all of three shots from three-point range.

When it came to the second half, he said to ClutchPoints that there was not “one thing too specific” that Golden State did that impacted the Heat as there was self-inflicted wounds.

“I don’t think there was one thing too specific,” Highsmith said. “I just think we just missed some open looks, kind of let our defense kind of affect our offense. We’re not defending sometimes, we get a little slow down our pace, their scoring, then we’re not getting the ball out quick or not running, not getting steals, deflections, So it was just tough. We just wasn’t consistent enough.”

Time is running out for the Heat as they are 39-33 on the season which puts them seventh in the tightly packed East. They have to finish out their home stand strong as their next game is Friday against the Portland Trail Blazers.