After new Jimmy Butler injury and 3-5 start, Heat facing early adversity: ‘We got to figure it out’

The Miami Heat is searching for solutions and now faces life without Jimmy Butler for the first time this season. This is not where the Heat wanted to be less than three weeks into the regular season.

But at 3-5 to start the season, this is the Heat’s reality.

“We have to be a lot better,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, putting it succinctly.

Heat falls to 3-5 with loss to Nuggets, as Butler exits early. Takeaways from rough night in Denver

With Friday night’s ugly 135-122 loss to the Denver Nuggets at Ball Arena, the Heat dropped its third straight game and fell to 0-2 on its challenging six-game trip.

To make matters worse, Heat star Jimmy Butler left Friday’s defeat early with 5:16 left in the first quarter and never returned after spraining his right ankle. Butler has already been ruled out for Sunday’s matchup against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network — Sun), but he’ll stay with the Heat on the road instead of returning to Miami.

Butler, 35, turned his right ankle early in Friday’s game while trying to dribble into the paint and then coming to an abrupt stop near the foul line. He immediately fell to the court and winced in pain before exiting the contest shortly after.

Butler, who can become a free agent this upcoming summer with a $52.4 million player option in his contract for next season, entered this season hoping to be available for more games after missing 20 or more games in three of the last four regular seasons. Heat president Pat Riley also challenged Butler this past offseason to be available for more games.

“It’s always next-man-up mentality,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said after Friday’s loss when asked about the possibility of having to play without Butler. “But we’ve dealt with injuries and different guys being out, me being one of them. It’s always a next-man-up mentality.”

Even with Butler sidelined for now, Spoelstra’s point is the same: The Heat must be a lot better than it has been so far this season to get out of this rough patch and turn things around.

The Heat entered Saturday without a clear identity, ranked 15th out of 30 NBA teams in offensive rating and 19th in defensive rating. The early-season defensive issues are most concerning, as the Heat has finished with a top-10 defensive rating in eight of the last nine seasons.

“We got to figure it out,” Heat veteran Duncan Robinson said. “This group has got to figure it out. We got some good stretches defensively. You got to learn how to win. You’ve got guys that have done it before. It’s just not going to come automatically.”

All the while, Spoelstra continues to work through different lineups in search of the right rotation.

The Heat has used the starting lineup of Terry Rozier, Herro, Butler, Nikola Jovic and Bam Adebayo in each of the first eight games this season. But that group has struggled so far, with opponents outscoring this lineup by 20.8 points per 100 possessions in their 91 minutes together this season.

Among the 20 lineups around the league that entered Saturday with 70 or more minutes played together, the Heat’s starting unit has the worst net rating.

That has left Spoelstra making tweaks to the Heat’s rotation in each of the last two games, opening two straight second halves with Haywood Highsmith playing in Jovic’s spot.

“He knows the deal,” Spoelstra said when asked about keeping Jovic on the bench to begin the last two third quarters. “Look, I’m not going to change the standards. He knows what the deal is. It has to be a level of energy and effort, make an impact. It’s not just him. That’s an easy target.

“If something is not working, I’m paid to make decisions and go to something else. And that’s not always an indictment on anybody. The best way to stay out there is impact the win, impact the game, impact the scoreboard, for anybody. If things are going well, guys will rock, they’ll continue to play.”

The problem is things aren’t going well, with last season’s struggles against quality teams continuing for the Heat early this season.

The Heat has started this season with an 0-4 record against teams that made the playoffs last season. The Heat’s only three wins so far have all come against teams that didn’t qualify for the playoffs last season — the Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons and Washington Wizards.

The Heat needs to find a solution to that fast, as six of its next seven games come against teams that made the playoffs last season.

“Stay together,” Heat captain and three-time All-Star center Bam Adebayo said of his message to the team. “When people go through stretches like this, everybody starts falling apart, everybody wants to do their own thing because they think that’s going to be the recipe for success. For us, we got to stay together through the good and the bad.”

The core of this Heat roster has already been through plenty of adversity together before, especially in the last two seasons.

The Heat found itself at 7-11 through the first 18 games of the 2022-23 season before eventually finding answers to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament and become just the second No. 8 seed in league history to advance to the NBA Finals. Miami went on to lose that championship series to the Nuggets.

The Heat started last regular season with a 1-4 record and endured relentless injury issues that led to a franchise record 35 different starting lineups used. The Heat still squeaked into the playoffs as the No. 8 seed through the play-in tournament for the second straight season, but this time was eliminated by the eventual NBA champion Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs.

“This is what we’re built for — backs against the wall,” Herro said. “We’ve lost three straight. We’ve been in a lot of games that we’ve lost. We just got to figure out a way to sustain it for 48 minutes. ... We just got to continue to stick with it and keep our spirits high. It’s early in the season and we just got to keep working hard.”

It’s early in the season, but the Heat has already been hit with some adversity at 3-5 and without Butler for Sunday’s game and possibly beyond.

“That’s what I love about this league,” Spoelstra said. “You can pay as much money as you want. You can earn as much money as you want. You have to earn wins in this league. We’re in a tough stretch right now, but this is the part you have to love — about how you can rally around the challenge, rally around each other and rally around doing tough things to earn wins.”

INJURY REPORT

Along with missing Butler on Sunday against the Timberwolves, the Heat also ruled out Josh Christopher (G League) and Keshad Johnson (G League).

But Heat backup center Kevin Love is off the injury report and is expected to make his season debut in Minneapolis. Love missed the first five games of the season because of personal reasons and sat out the last three games as he worked his way back into game shape.

The Heat could also get second-year forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. back on Sunday. Jaquez, who has missed the last three games because of a stomach illness, is listed as questionable for the Heat’s matchup against the Timberwolves due to “return to competition reconditioning.”