Heat unveils Adebayo-Ware frontcourt, snapping skid in blowout win over Spurs. Takeaways

Life has been hard for the Miami Heat lately. From the Jimmy Butler saga to three straight losses, it has been a rough stretch for the Heat.

The Heat needed something easy and got it on Sunday, cruising to a drama-free 128-107 blowout win over the San Antonio Spurs (19-22) at Kaseya Center to snap its three-game skid and reach the midway point of the regular season at 21-20.

“We had details of just playing hard and just trying to block the outside noise,” Heat guard Terry Rozier said. “Hopefully we can keep it going and build off of this.”

The Heat trailed by 13 points with 8:56 left in the second quarter, but closed the first half on a 20-2 run to turn the game and enter halftime ahead by five.

The Heat never looked back, exploding for 46 points in the third quarter to take a 24-point lead into the fourth quarter. The 46-point period is tied for the fourth-highest scoring quarter in Heat history.

The Heat’s lead grew to as large as 27 points in the second half on the way to its second-most lopsided win of the season.

Heat rookie center Kel’el Ware proved to be a big difference maker off the bench Sunday, finishing the victory with a team-high 25 points on 10-of-19 shooting from the field, 1-of-5 shooting on threes, 4-of-4 shooting from the foul line to go with eight rebounds, two assists and two blocks in 34 minutes. The Heat outscored the Spurs by a team-best 27 points with Ware on the court.

Ware was one of six Heat players who finished Sunday’s victory with double-digit points.

Duncan Robinson totaled 21 points on 5-of-7 shooting from behind the arc.

Rozier recorded 20 points, four rebounds and five assists.

Tyler Herro added 18 points, six rebounds and seven assists.

Nikola Jovic contributed 14 points, five assists and two steals.

Jaime Jaquez Jr. finished with 12 points, six rebounds and three steals.

The Heat’s bench outscored the Spurs’ reserves by the large margin of 73-32. The 73 points from the Heat’s reserves are a season-high.

The Heat started Sunday’s game 0 of 8 on threes, but went on to make 18 of its final 25 three-point attempts to blow past the Spurs. By making 18 of 33 threes, the Heat shot a season-best 54.5 percent from three-point range in the win.

For the Spurs, center Victory Wembanyama finished with 21 points on 8-of-18 shooting from the field and 4-of-10 shooting on threes, 10 rebounds, three assists and one block.

Devin Vassell scored a team-high 23 points for the Spurs.

The Heat, which is now 1-1 on its homestand, closes its three-game stretch in Miami with a matchup against the Portland Trail Blazers on Tuesday.

“The biggest thing for us is just enjoy this win,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “But we still got to keep going, keep leading each other and stay together.”

Five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Spurs on Sunday:

While the Heat didn’t end up needing much from Butler, he provided solid minutes.

In Butler’s second game back from his seven-game unpaid team suspension, he finished Sunday’s win with eight points on 3-of-7 shooting from the field, 0-of-1 shooting on threes and 2-of-2 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds and seven assists in 28 minutes.

Butler started fast, scoring six of the Heat’s first 10 points. He scored two points the rest of the way.

While Butler is now back with the Heat after a drama-filled few weeks that included a trade request and suspension, Butler’s thinking hasn’t changed. Butler still wants the Heat to trade him and the Heat will still try to trade him, according to league sources, but there has been little progress in trade talks so far.

The NBA’s trade deadline is Feb. 6.

With Butler available for the second straight game, the Heat used its preferred starting lineup for the second straight game.

The Heat opened Sunday’s game with a lineup of Herro, Robinson, Butler, Haywood Highsmith and Adebayo.

This is the Heat’s most used starting lineup, as Sunday marked the 16th time it has opened a game together so far this season.

It’s also among the most used lineups in the league, as it entered Sunday with 180 minutes played together this season. That’s the 18th-most minutes that an NBA lineup has been used for so far this season, even with Butler already missing 17 of the Heat’s first 41 games.

For perspective, the most used Heat lineup for all of last season played just 181 minutes together in part because of the team’s injury issues.

However, the Heat’s starting lineup didn’t produce positive results to begin Sunday’s game. The Spurs opened the contest on a 20-12 run before the Heat made its first substitution of the game.

The Heat didn’t go back to this group on Sunday after that first stint to begin the game.

Sunday’s game turned when Heat coach Erik Spoelstra went to a combination he had barely used this season.

The Heat duo of Adebayo and Ware entered Sunday with just one minute played together this season, with Spoelstra just recently starting to play the two bigs together in end-of-quarter defensive situations.

“Obviously, they’re both dynamic defensive players,” Spoelstra said before Sunday’s game when asked about this new strategy. “It gives us more versatility, more ability to make things tough. I think we’re at a point that I’ll start to do that if I feel like it will help in those end-of-quarter situations.”

Hours later, Spoelstra played Adebayo and Ware together for an extended stretch for the first time ever. That decision helped flip the game in the Heat’s favor.

With Ware already on the court, Spoelstra subbed in Adebayo with the Spurs ahead by seven points and 7:19 left in the second quarter.

Adebayo and Ware then played the rest of the period together, as the Heat closed the first half on a 14-2 run during that span to turn that seven-point deficit into a five-point lead at halftime.

Some of that success came down to the Heat making four threes during that stretch after missing its first eight three-point attempts of the game.

But the Heat’s defense appeared to be bolstered by the Adebayo-Ware frontcourt, as that size allowed the Heat to better matchup against Wembanyama’s 7-foot-3 frame.

After that strong finish to the first half, the Heat began the second half with Ware taking Highsmith’s place in the starting group to keep the Adebayo-Ware frontcourt together.

The Heat’s success with Adebayo and Ware playing together continued, opening the second half on a 22-11 run before Ware was subbed out with 6:01 left in the third quarter.

Combine those two runs together, the Heat went on a huge 36-13 run in the 13:18 they played together between the impressive finish to the first half and the quality start to the second half.

“That was definitely the initial spark to the game,” Spoelstra said of the Adebayo-Ware minutes. “They just were tremendous defensively. That kind of ignited the energy for the group and they were able to get some in transition. And then our offense started flowing from there.”

At the start of this stretch, the Heat trailed by seven points. By the end of it, the Heat led by 16 points on its way to the rout.

“It’s exciting,” Ware said of the pairing. “Me and Bam have been wanting it to happen. Just for it to happen, we had to make the best out of it for the first time. So we showed people what it looked like a little bit.”

As expected, Adebayo has taken more three-pointers this season. But he continues to struggle to make enough of them.

While Adebayo entered Sunday’s game taking a career-high 2.5 three-point attempts per game this season, he made just 28.3 percent of those shots.

Among the 202 players around the league who entered Sunday with at least 95 threes taken this season, Adebayo held the ninth-worst three-point shooting percentage.

Those issues continued on Sunday, as Adebayo shot 0 of 2 from behind the arc against the Spurs. He airballed his first three-point attempt of the game.

But Adebayo’s shooting struggles aren’t just from behind the three-point line, as he entered Sunday shooting a career-low 45.6 percent from the field this season after shooting better than 50 percent from the field in each of the first seven seasons of his NBA career.

Adebayo’s inefficient shooting season continued Sunday, finishing the win with six points on 3-of-9 shooting from the field. But he did make an impact in other ways, contributing 11 rebounds, five assists, one steal and one block while posting a plus/minus of plus 19 .

The Heat and Spurs are hovering around .500 this season. But less than 15 years ago, both teams were competing for NBA championships.

The Heat and Spurs faced off in the 2013 and 2014 NBA Finals. The Heat defeated the Spurs to win the championship in 2013 before the Spurs earned revenge by ousting the Heat to win the title in 2014.

“I think it was meant to be that we each were able to experience the champagne and the absolute elation of getting over the mountain top,” Spoelstra said before Sunday’s game, reflecting back on that time. “And to be able to do it against a franchise that you have such incredible respect for, I think that respect is symbiotic.

“And then also to have the experience of the pain. If you’re going to have those kinds of experiences, you want to do it with a franchise like the Spurs. Hopefully those two years will go down in some kind of NBA history. It was incredible to be a part of it. They are memories that all of us will just keep with us the rest of our careers and lives. But, man, they’re a special organization and it was an honor to share that stage with them.”

This season, the Heat is in eighth place in the Eastern Conference. The Spurs sit in 12th place in the Western Conference.