Takeaways from another Heat loss to a sub-.500 team, as Bulls sweep season series

Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 113-99 loss to the Chicago Bulls (33-37) on Saturday night at United Center open a quick but important two-game trip. The Heat (38-34) is right back at it on Sunday against the struggling Detroit Pistons (6 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) to close the trip:

The Heat entered with the major rest advantage, but still fell to a team with a sub-.500 record in yet another disappointing loss to sink deeper into play-in tournament territory.

The Heat was coming off a two-day break after Wednesday’s blowout win over the Memphis Grizzlies.

The Bulls were playing their third game in four nights on the second night of a back-to-back set just 24 hours after their grueling double overtime win over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday.

But Chicago was still somehow the sharper, more physical and more active team at the start.

The Heat’s biggest lead of the night was one point, as the Bulls took a 9-7 lead with 7:44 left in the first quarter and never trailed again.

The Bulls shredded the Heat’s suddenly struggling defense and slowed the Heat’s shaky offense.

The Bulls closed the first quarter with a 14-point lead before entering halftime ahead 70-45 behind their best offensive half of the season. Chicago shot 61.7 percent from the field and 9 of 17 (52.9 percent) from three-point range on 21 assists and just two turnovers to post a season-best offensive rating for any half of 155.6 points scored per 100 possessions.

Meanwhile, the Heat shot just 40 percent from the field and 5 of 20 (25 percent) from beyond the arc on 13 assists and eight turnovers in the first two quarters to enter halftime in a 25-point hole.

“We weren’t making them do anything that they didn’t want to do,” Heat star Jimmy Butler said. “If they wanted to shoot a layup, they would shoot a layup, a midrange jump shot, a three, and they were making all of them. So we just got to get into the ball, contest every shot and without a doubt play a lot harder.”

But after the Bulls pulled ahead by 27 points with 9:22 left in the third quarter, the Heat used a huge 38-14 run to cut the deficit to just three points with 8:43 remaining in the fourth quarter.

“We looked like two different teams first half to second half. Way more active, our disposition was better,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.

That’s the closest the Heat would get, though, as the Bulls responded with a 20-6 run to push their lead back up to 17 with 1:43 to play to hold on for the win.

“When we got it within three, I think everybody on our bench thought we were going to somehow figure it out and take the lead,” Spoelstra said. “They held us off and you do have to give them credit for that. I don’t think that was a case of us being worn down or anything at all. They just made more plays, made more shots and we had some costly turnovers in that fourth quarter.”

Chicago outscored Miami 51-30 from three-point range to negate the Heat’s 19-6 edge at the free-throw line and 19-5 edge in second-chance points. The Bulls shot 17 of 34 (50 percent) on threes and the Heat shot just 10 of 37 (27 percent) from beyond the arc.

Butler again led the Heat with a team-high 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting from the field and 8-of-10 shooting from the foul line. He scored 14 points in the third quarter to spark Miami’s second-half run that ultimately fell short.

Bam Adebayo added 23 points on 9-of-17 shooting from the field, seven rebounds and four assists for the Heat.

The rest of Miami’s roster combined for 52 points on an inefficient 34.6 percent shooting from the field.

Six Bulls players closed with double-digit points led by a team-high 24 points and 10 assists from DeMar DeRozan.

Patrick Beverley, who the Bulls signed last month, finished with 17 points on 5-of-10 shooting from deep. The five made threes represented a new season-high for Beverley.

With Saturday’s win, the Bulls clinched a sweep of their three-game season series with the Heat. The last time Chicago swept its season series with Miami was in the 2009-10 campaign.

The Heat also fell to 15-12 this season against teams currently with losing records. Miami was 25-9 against sub-.500 teams last regular season on its way to entering the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s top playoff seed.

And if that’s not enough, Saturday’s result also ended the Heat’s winning streak at two. Miami has not won three straight games in over a month.

With just 10 regular-season games left, it’s looking more and more likely that the Heat will need to qualify for this season’s playoffs through the play-in tournament.

“This is a disappointing loss for sure, without a doubt,” Spoelstra said. “We have to take the L. That’s 0-3 against this team. They have our number this year. I don’t like to do this, but we got to move on. We got to get focused for a very important game tomorrow night.”

While the Heat’s offense was trending in a positive direction prior to Saturday’s loss, the defense has been trending in the other direction.

After entering the All-Star break with the NBA’s fifth-best defensive rating (allowing 111.2 points per 100 possessions), the Heat holds the league’s 25th-ranked defensive rating (allowing 117.8 points per 100 possessions) in 13 games since the break.

Four of the Heat’s six worst defensive games of the season in terms of defensive rating have come since the break, and Saturday’s poor performance against the Bulls is on that list as Miami’s sixth-worst defensive display of the season.

Defense was the most reliable part of the Heat’s winning formula through the first four months of the season, but it has turned into a weakness for the last month of games.

“We’re going to shore this all up. That’s it,” Spoelstra said when asked about the Heat’s defensive slippage since the break. “We’re going to shore it up. We’re capable of being much better defensively and that will happen tomorrow.”

As for the Heat’s offense, it has been among the NBA’s worst units all season. Miami has the league’s fifth-worst offensive rating this season.

But there has been some optimism building around the Heat’s offense recently because of an uptick in production. Miami entered Saturday with the league’s third-best offensive rating (scoring 119.9 points per 100 possessions) in its previous eight games.

That momentum came to a halt in Saturday’s loss, as the Heat finished a game with 100 or fewer points for a league-high 15th time this season. Miami is 5-10 in those games.

The Heat played without point guard Kyle Lowry on Saturday, but he’s expected to play Sunday in Detroit on the back end of the back-to-back set.

Lowry did not suffer a setback. The decision to hold out Lowry against the Bulls was just part of the Heat’s maintenance plan for him after returning last week from left knee soreness that forced him to miss 15 straight games.

“This is what we planned on during the week and we’re sticking with the plan,” Spoelstra said prior to Saturday’s contest in Chicago. “[Sunday] is when we deemed his next work day.”

The Heat is taking a cautious approach with Lowry, who turns 37 on March 25. He has played off the bench in each of his three appearances since recently returning from injury after starting in his first 44 appearances of the season.

The Heat has two back-to-backs remaining on its regular-season schedule following this weekend’s set. Will Lowry be held out of one game during those back-to-backs, too?

“We’ll see where we go from here,” Spoelstra said. “But this is the plan for this week. We’re formulating the plan for next week and we’ll see where we go from there.”

Along with missing Lowry, the Heat was without Cody Zeller (broken nose), Jamal Cain (G League), Nikola Jovic (G League) and Orlando Robinson (G League) against the Bulls.

With Lowry out, guard Victor Oladipo was back in the Heat’s bench rotation.

After receiving his first DNP-CD (did not play, coach’s decision) of the season in Wednesday’s win over the Grizzlies, Oladipo was back in the mix on Saturday with Lowry’s absence creating room for him.

The Heat’s bench rotation against the Bulls included Oladipo, Max Strus, Caleb Martin, Omer Yurtseven and Haywood Highsmith until Duncan Robinson entered to play the final 1:43 of the game with Chicago already in control.

Oladipo finished Saturday’s loss with two points on 1-of-3 shooting from the field and 0-of-1 shooting on threes, three rebounds, two assists and one block in 16 minutes.

Yurtseven was used for a first-quarter stint that lasted 3:10, but committed a turnover and posted a rough plus/minus of minus-8 during that short stretch. That’s when Spoelstra turned to the 6-foot-5 Highsmith to play as the Heat’s backup center over Yurtseven in the second half for the second straight game.

Zeller is expected to slide back into the backup center role when he returns from injury in the coming days. Yurtseven, who missed most of the season because of November ankle surgery, has struggled to take advantage of the opportunity to earn more playing time with Zeller out.

The Heat’s bench rotation continues to evolve, as Spoelstra works through different combinations with the roster as healthy as it has been all season and Martin and Lowry now playing as reserves after spending most of the season as starters.

The question is, will Oladipo again be out of the rotation when Lowry returns to play against the Pistons on Sunday?

The Heat will probably need to be close to perfect in the final weeks of the regular season just to avoid the play-in tournament.

With the New York Knicks winning and the Brooklyn Nets idle on Saturday, the seventh-place Heat fell four games behind the fifth-place Knicks and two games behind the sixth-place Nets with only 10 regular-season games left to play.

The tiebreaker with the Knicks is still up for grabs, but the Nets have already clinched the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat. That means Miami is essentially three games behind Brooklyn since the Heat doesn’t hold the tiebreaker edge.

Even if Brooklyn goes 6-6 over its final 12 regular-season games, the Heat would need to close with an 8-2 record over its final 10 games to pass the Nets.

“We need them in the worst way,” Strus said of the importance of winning games at this point of the season considering the Heat’s position in the standings. “Every game is a playoff game. We’ve been saying that for a couple weeks now, but it’s got to mean something.”

To escape having to qualify for the play-in tournament, the Heat needs to finish as a top-six playoff seed in the East. The seventh through 10th-place teams in each conference participate in the play-in tournament.

The No. 7 Heat are two games ahead of the No. 8 Atlanta Hawks, 2.5 games ahead of the No. 9 Toronto Raptors and four games ahead of the No. 10 Bulls.

“We only got 10 games left in the season,” Adebayo said. “We need to figure it out now because we slip too many and we’ll be out of the playoffs.”