Heat takes care of business against Raptors for fourth straight win. Takeaways and details

Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 114-104 win over the Toronto Raptors (7-19) on Thursday night at Kaseya Center to extend its winning streak to four games and clinch a perfect 4-0 homestand. The Heat (13-10) now enters a three-day break before traveling to take on the Detroit Pistons on Monday:

For the third time in the last two weeks, the Heat and Raptors faced off. After splitting the first two meetings, the Heat won this one behind a solid defensive effort and quality performances from Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro.

The start was ugly for the Heat, as the Raptors scored 28 of their first 35 points in the paint on their way to building a 41-25 lead with 8:38 left in the second quarter despite missing their best player, Scottie Barnes, because of a sprained ankle.

“I think at the beginning of the game, we were trying to see if we could ease into the game defensively and just score and put points on the board,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “[The Raptors] are not going to let you do that.”

But the Heat quickly found its footing, closing the second quarter on a huge 33-10 run to turn that 16-point deficit into a seven-point lead entering halftime.

The Heat never looked back, extending its lead to as large as 20 points in the second half.

After scoring their 28th paint point with 9:30 left in the second quarter, the Raptors totaled 28 paint points for the rest of the game.

The Raptors also didn’t make enough threes, finishing 11 of 32 (34.4 percent) from behind the arc. The Heat shot 13 of 32 (40.6 percent) from deep to outscore the Raptors 39-33 from three-point range on its way to the 10-point victory.

After shooting 47.7 percent from the field in the first half, the Raptors also shot just 41.7 percent from the field in the second half.

“We dug into doing the tough things and then, as we say often, that tends to change things offensively,” Spoelstra said.

Herro, who was recently named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week for his play last week, continued his strong season with 23 points on 9-of-13 shooting from the field and 4-of-7 shooting from three-point range, four rebounds and four assists on Thursday.

Adebayo added 21 points, 16 rebounds, six assists and one block for the Heat. It marked the 205th double-double of Adebayo’s NBA career, tying Alonzo Mourning for the second-most double-doubles in Heat history behind franchise leader Rony Seikaly (221 double-doubles).

For the Raptors, Gradey Dick scored a team-high 22 points, but shot just 3 of 11 from three-point range.

Raptors guard RJ Barrett was limited to 13 points on 5-of-18 shooting from the field.

What’s behind the Heat’s first four-game winning streak of the season?

“I just feel like we’re making the right plays and we’re playing together,” Adebayo said. “Obviously, we’re doing it on the defensive end. Really getting stops, and really emphasizing and making that a priority.”

Since the start of the four-game winning streak, the Heat has posted the NBA’s top offensive rating, eighth-ranked defensive rating and second-ranked net rating.

With Jimmy Butler at the center of trade speculation for the last few days, he was relatively quiet on the court Thursday.

Butler’s hair was loud on Thursday, showing up with orange braids. But Butler turned in a quiet stat line — relative to his high standards — with 11 points on 3-of-8 shooting from the field and 5-of-8 shooting from the foul line, five rebounds, four assists and one block in 29 minutes.

Butler did not play in the fourth quarter of the double-digit win.

“I can change my hair to whatever color I want to and there’s no subliminals in my hair,” Butler said, referencing the social media conspiracy that he’s signaling the group of teams that he’s interested in being traded to through the color of his hair. “I’ve just been changing it a lot lately. Orange was the brightest color that I had, so that’s what I went with.”

Thursday’s performance came in the wake of ESPN’s Shams Charania reporting Tuesday that “the Heat are open to listening to offers for Butler and making a deal if the proposal is right.”

Charania also reported that Butler’s agent, Bernie Lee, has indicated in league circles that Butler is open to trade destinations such as the Houston Rockets, Dallas Mavericks, Golden State Warriors and Phoenix Suns. Charania added that teams have been told that Butler plans to decline his $52.4 million player option in his contract for next season to become a free agent this summer.

Lee used social media to push back against Charania’s information, calling the reports “fabricated” through his X account.

“I love it,” Butler said after Thursday’s win when asked about Lee’s response to Charania. “I am all for the back and forth. I mean, before he’s my agent, I guess we’re like brothers now, we do everything together. But I feel for him and at least somebody is sticking up for me.”

The Heat, which sometimes publicly denies trade reports, declined to comment on the ESPN report.

The NBA’s trade deadline is Feb. 6.

The Heat’s new starting lineup led to another win.

The Heat went with the starting lineup of Herro, Duncan Robinson, Butler, Haywood Highsmith and Adebayo on Thursday for the 10th time in the last 11 games. The only time that the Heat didn’t use this starting lineup during this stretch came when Butler missed its Dec. 2 loss to the Boston Celtics because of knee soreness.

Since becoming the Heat’s starting group, this lineup has been among the NBA’s best.

Among the nine NBA lineups that entered Thursday with at least 100 minutes logged together since the Heat first used this starting group on Nov. 18, the Herro-Robinson-Butler-Highsmith-Adebayo combination has posted the top net rating (outscoring opponents by 20.7 points per 100 possessions in 116 minutes).

But the Heat’s starting lineup wasn’t dominant against the Raptors.

To begin Thursday’s game, the Heat was outscored 20-14 before making its first substitution of the night with 4:03 left in the first quarter.

The Heat’s starting lineup was better to begin the second half, outscoring the Raptors 18-15 over the first 6:06 of the third quarter before Miami turned to its bench.

The Heat’s starting group finished the win with a negative plus/minus of minus 4 in 14 minutes together.

However, the unit’s plus/minus didn’t matter on Thursday. Because in the end, the Heat improved to 8-2 this season when opening a game with this starting lineup.

With the Heat facing a double-digit deficit in the first half of Thursday’s game, Nikola Jovic entered for his first game action in nearly three weeks.

Jovic began the season as a starter, but fell out of the Heat’s rotation last month. After starting in the Heat’s first eight games this season, Jovic did not play in eight straight games (he missed two of those games with a sprained ankle and went down as a healthy scratch in the other six games) before entering Thursday’s contest.

After the Heat’s sluggish start led to a double-digit deficit, Spoelstra subbed in Jovic with Miami trailing by 16 points and 8:37 left in the second quarter.

Jovic was effective in his first game action since Nov. 24, totaling 11 points on 3-of-3 shooting from the field, 2-of-2 shooting on threes and 3-of-4 shooting from the foul line while playing the rest of the second quarter to help spark the Heat’s strong finish to the first half. Miami outscored Toronto by 23 points during this stretch to turn a 16-point deficit into a seven-point halftime lead.

Jovic finished the win with 14 points on 4-of-5 shooting from the field and 2-of-2 shooting from three-point range, four rebounds and one assist in 24 minutes off the bench. He recorded an impressive plus/minus of plus 25.

“He gave us a really important spark,” Spoelstra said of Jovic.

Jovic was part of a five-man Heat bench rotation on Thursday that also included Dru Smith, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kevin Love and Terry Rozier.

Smith again contributed quality minutes off the Heat’s bench, finishing Thursday’s victory with 11 points, three rebounds, three assists and one steal in a career-high 34 minutes. He played the entire fourth quarter for the third straight game and closed the victory as a plus 14.

“He’s just making the right plays every time down the court,” Adebayo said of Smith’s impact.

With Josh Christopher (G League), Keshad Johnson (G League), Pelle Larsson (sprained right ankle) and Josh Richardson (right heel inflammation) unavailable, the only available Heat players who did not get into Thursday’s game were Thomas Bryant, Alec Burks and Kel’el Ware.

The Raptors were without Scottie Barnes (right ankle sprain), Bruce Brown (return to competition reconditioning), Ulrich Chomche (G League), A.J. Lawson (G League) and Immanuel Quickley (partial UCL tear in left elbow) against the Heat.

Next up for the Heat is another long break between games.

Thursday’s matchup against the Raptors came after a three-day break between games.

The Heat now get another three-day break before its next game on Monday against the Pistons in Detroit. The Heat will then get another three-day break prior to continuing its schedule on Dec. 20 against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Miami.

The light schedule stems from the in-season tournament, with the league staggering the schedule to make room for the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup. The semifinals of the in-season tournament are on Saturday and the championship game is on Tuesday in Las Vegas.

The Heat is among the 22 teams that did not advance past the group stage of the in-season tournament, with Thursday’s matchup against the Pistons and Monday’s meeting with the Pistons added to Miami’s schedule once eliminated from the NBA Cup to complete its 82-game regular-season slate.

But the light schedule extends beyond this stretch, as Thursday marked just the Heat’s 23rd game of the season. The Orlando Magic have already played 27 games.