Takeaways from Heat’s loss to league-worst Timberwolves, and real talk from Jimmy Butler

After consecutive double-digit losses against two of the NBA’s top teams, the schedule was set up for the Miami Heat to bounce back against the team with the league’s worst record.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, the Heat suffered one of its worst losses of the season in a 119-111 defeat to the struggling Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center on Friday night. It marked the third straight loss for Miami, which closed the four-game trip at 1-3.

“Speechless. We shouldn’t have lost that game,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said.

The Timberwolves (15-42) entered on a two-game losing skid that included losses by a combined total of 55 points, but they found a way past the Heat.

Miami fell back to .500 at 28-28, as it battles for playoff positioning in the Eastern Conference with just 16 games remaining on its regular-season schedule.

The Heat entered the fourth quarter with a five-point lead, but the Timberwolves won the fourth quarter 31-18 to rally for the win. Miami shot just 6 of 19 (31.6 percent) in the final period after shooting 54.1 percent through the first three quarters.

While the Heat’s offense was efficient for most of the night, its defense struggled throughout the game.

The Timberwolves, which entered with the NBA’s fifth-worst offensive rating, scored 119 points on 51.9 percent shooting from the field and 15-of-36 shooting on threes. Seven players finished with double-digit points for Minnesota.

Timberwolves center Karl-Anthony Towns scored a team-high 24 points on 8-of-14 shooting, to go with five rebounds and five assists.

Jimmy Butler led Miami with 30 points, 10 rebounds, eight assists and three steals in 39 minutes. Adebayo finished with 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting, four rebounds and four assists in 33 minutes.

The Heat now returns home for a nationally televised matchup against the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday afternoon at AmericanAirlines Arena.

Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s ugly loss to the Timberwolves:

The Heat could not survive the non-Butler minutes Friday, and Butler did not mince words about the team’s play following the game.

Butler was a net-positive even in the disappointing loss, finishing as a plus-four. But Miami was outscored by 12 points in the nine minutes Butler was on the bench.

“A loss is a loss to me and we don’t deserve to win whenever we take these teams lightly, we don’t do what we’re supposed to do on the defensive end,” Butler said. “We just looked bad as a whole, as a group, as a unit. It’s not good basketball.”

The Heat began the trip with a quality win over the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday, but has since dropped three straight. What has gone wrong?

“I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine,” Butler responded.

One of the issues that has plagued Miami recently and during various stretches this season is rebounding. The Timberwolves outscored the Heat in second-chance points 23-5 with the help of 10 offensive rebounds, as Minnesota outrebounded Miami 45-33 on Friday.

The Heat has been outrebounded 136-99 during its current three-game losing skid. During that stretch, opponents have combined to turn 30 offensive rebounds into 45 second-chance points.

“We’re just being soft. That’s it,” Butler said of the Heat’s rebounding issues. “Not getting into bodies, scared of some contact. Just soft overall.”

With just a month remaining in the regular season, Butler didn’t have an answer when asked where the Heat goes from here.

“Hell, if we want to go out there and guard somebody and we want to box out and rebound, it could be good,” he said. “If we don’t want to do that and we want to do what we’ve been doing for these past couple games, it could be bad. I don’t know. It’s on us to figure it out. I can’t tell you which way we’re going to go. I don’t know what team is going to show up on any given night.”

There have been stretches this season that the Heat has looked like one of the better teams in the Eastern Conference, with five-game and six-game winning streaks under its belt. But there have also been five-game and six-game losing skids, and now a three-game skid that includes a loss to the team with the NBA’s worst record.

“It’s not frustrating because we do it so often,” Butler said of the Heat’s lulls this season. “It’s almost like it’s expected in a bad way to put it. We just think we’re such a good team and then reality hits us, we’re humbled. I’m glad because that’s what this game does. Home, away, no matter what opponent you’re playing against. If you just stroll into the game thinking you’re nice, you’re good, this is what happens. I’m glad it happened to us. If we don’t fix it, I hope it continues to happen to us.”

Butler also made it clear that he wants Adebayo to attack the rim more often.

Adebayo was efficient Friday with 17 points on 7-of-8 shooting from the field and 3-of-5 shooting from the foul line. But just three of Adebayo’s shots came at the rim and four Heat players finished with more shot attempts than him.

“I want Bam to attack the rim because nobody can stay in front of him,” Butler said. “Nobody can stay in front of him. Go. You’re going to get fouled or you’re going to dunk on somebody. That’s cool. I love him shooting midrange jump shots, too. But he lets people off the hook. Play bully ball. I like bully ball.”

Finding the right balance between looking for his own shot and playing the role of facilitator is the challenge Adebayo faces. He took just six shots in Tuesday’s loss to the Phoenix Suns and responded with 16 shot attempts in Wednesday’s loss to the Denver Nuggets.

Adebayo is the Heat’s second-leading scorer behind Butler with 19 points per game, but ranks third on the team in shots with 12.7 field goal attempts per game. Adebayo is shooting 56.6 percent from the field, including 75 percent at the rim and 42.5 percent on midrange looks, and 80.6 percent from the foul line this season.

“It’s not about scoring and that’s the hard thing in this league is that’s the immediate thing people look at is how many points does somebody score,” Spoelstra said. “Bam has so many things that are important for him to do for us to be successful and scoring is one of them, facilitating is another of them, screening is another, defending and communicating our defense and finishing off our defense.”

Spoelstra said the Heat fouled too much and allowed too many second-chance opportunities in Friday’s loss.

The rebounding issues have been an ongoing issue, as previously mentioned. As for the other problem, the Heat committed 20 fouls in the second half that led to 22 free-throw attempts for the Timberwolves over the final two quarters.

“The two biggest things that are pretty glaring and pretty obvious were we were fouling too much and the second-chance opportunities were the difference in the game,” Spoelstra said. “You’re talking about a close game on the road and I believe it was 23-5 difference in extra opportunity points. That’s tough to overcome and that’s a problem right now, us being able to finish our defense.”

Is the Heat’s switch-heavy defense contributing to its rebounding problem by putting smaller players at a disadvantage against bigger players?

“That’s not an excuse. We’ve done that long enough,” Spoelstra said. “We had missed block outs, guys running into open space and not enough extra efforts in traffic. We had been building a very good defense and even our rebounding was coming around. The last three games, we have not finished our defense well and we’ve paid the price for it.”

The Heat had an another ugly second quarter, and the bench is partly to blame for those struggles.

For the third straight game, Miami was dominated in the second period Friday. The Heat entered the second quarter with an 11-point advantage, but the game was tied at 61 entering halftime after the Timberwolves won the second period 35-24 to erase Miami’s early lead.

In the Heat’s last three second quarters, it has been outscored by a total of 41 points. The Phoenix Suns won Tuesday’s second quarter by 14 points, the Denver Nuggets won Wednesday’s second quarter by 16 points and the Timberwolves won Friday’s second quarter by 11 points.

The bench has played a role in the Heat’s recent second-quarter struggles. With the starters usually playing most of the opening period, there are more reserves on the court in the second quarter and the bench has not been a strength for Miami during this three-game stretch.

The Heat’s bench was outscored 52-25 on Friday. During its current three-game skid, Miami’s reserves been outscored 165-83.

Heat reserve guard Tyler Herro struggled for the second straight game with four points on 1-of-7 shooting in 23 minutes. He has totaled just nine points on 3-of-17 shooting from the field and 1-of-9 shooting on threes in the past two games, with opponents outscoring the Heat by 29 points with Herro on the court during this two-game span.

“We have to figure it out,” Spoelstra said of the bench’s recent struggles. “It’s not something that we can ignore at this point. We get production from different guys at different times on our bench, but it’s not that unit really producing and moving the needle and that’s what we have to figure out.”

Much like with veteran guard Goran Dragic, the Heat is taking a cautious approach with veteran forward Andre Iguodala amid this season’s compressed schedule.

Iguodala, who has played in 50 of the Heat’s 56 games this season, was held out of Friday’s contest. The 37-year-old was listed as out because of left hip soreness.

But when asked about Iguodala’s absence, Spoelstra said the Heat is just “trying to smart about his health and the schedule.” Friday marked the third of eight games for the Heat in a 12-day span.

Miami is also taking a similar approach with Dragic, who the team opted to rest in Wednesday’s loss to the Nuggets on the second night of a back-to-back.

Dragic, who turns 35 on May 6, played Friday. He scored 15 of the Heat’s 25 bench points against the Timberwolves.

The only other Heat player besides Iguodala who missed Friday’s game was guard Victor Oladipo, who remains out indefinitely because of right knee soreness.

Friday’s game was secondary to more important matters happening around the Minneapolis area.

Target Center is not far from where Daunte Wright, a a 20-year-old Black man, died on Sunday when now-former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter shot him during a traffic stop just outside Minneapolis. The now-former Brooklyn Center police chief said Potter intended to use her Taser on Wright but instead accidentally fired her handgun.

All the while just miles away in Minneapolis, the murder trial progresses for the ex-officer charged with killing George Floyd last May.

“Everybody has a heavy heart about this and you can see just from the outside with the Timberwolves players and organization, what they’ve been going through this week is disheartening,” Spoelstra said. “This continues to happen and then we have a game here when you have mixed emotions about everything because you feel that there’s an incredible wrong that happened and you want to do something to make a difference.”

Players from both teams wore warm-up shirts on Friday that included the message, “WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL,” on them.

The Heat was one of the teams to partner with the Timberwolves to auction off autographed versions of those warm-up shirts to benefit The Daunte Wright Memorial Fund, which has been designated as the official fund to support the Wright family.