Takeaways and postgame reaction from loss to Knicks, as Heat sinks deeper into play-in territory

Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 101-92 loss to the New York Knicks (44-33) on Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden to close an important two-game trip at 0-2. The Heat (40-37) now returns to Miami to face the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday:

The Heat knows the importance of these games as the regular season winds down, but it’s just not winning them.

Before the game, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said: “That old adage, would you play if it was the playoffs? We’re basically at that moment right now. These are playoff games for us.”

So far, that desperation has not produced positive results. The Heat dropped its third straight game during a stretch it needs to rack up wins just to avoid the play-in tournament.

“Our group is built on competitiveness and playing in these kind of games where there’s great consequences,” Spoelstra said following Wednesday’s loss in New York. “It’s been a disappointing 48 hours and three straight games. But we’ll get back to Miami, put our arms around each other, have a prep day on Friday and get to work and get ready for Saturday.”

On Wednesday, the Knicks took control of a close and competitive game behind a big fourth-quarter run.

After 20 lead changes and 12 ties through the first three quarters, the Knicks took an 86-84 lead with 7:14 to play and never trailed again.

The Heat led 84-83 with 8:57 remaining, but the Knicks responded by going on a game-deciding 17-5 run to take an 11-point lead with 2:13 to play on their way to the win.

“I called a timeout at seven minutes,” Spoelstra said. “We were down two and then boom, I blinked and it was a 10-point game. I thought this was going to go right in our favor. We love those games that become possession games and it can be about toughness and you just find a way to gut it out. I had to double take and I had to take a second timeout just two minutes later and that was deflating.”

The Heat’s leading duo of Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler were quiet, combining for just 21 points on 9-of-20 shooting from the field and 3-of-4 shooting from the foul line.

Adebayo finished with nine points on 4-of-10 shooting from the field and 1-of-2 shooting from the foul line, 11 rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes. The performance put an end to Adebayo’s career-long streak of 87 straight games with double-digit points dating back to last season, which goes down as the fourth-longest such streak in Heat history behind LeBron James’ 294-game streak and Dwyane Wade’s 148-game and 111-game streaks.

Butler, who played after missing Tuesday’s loss to the Toronto Raptors with neck soreness, closed with 12 points on 5-of-10 shooting from the field and 2-of-2 shooting from the foul line, three rebounds and six assists in 35 minutes.

Adebayo and Butler were both on the court for the Knicks’ late run, as Adebayo played the final 8:42 of the game and Butler played the final 7:12 of the game.

Adebayo was scoreless and missed each of his two field-goal attempts in the fourth quarter.

Butler scored two points on 1-of-3 shooting from the field in the fourth quarter.

The Heat lost to a Knicks team that played the entire second half without All-Star forward Julius Randle, who exited the game with 2:38 left in the second quarter and never returned.

Immanuel Quickley led the Knicks with a game-high 24 points off the bench.

Gabe Vincent totaled a team-high 21 points for the Heat.

Wednesday’s loss not only pushed the Heat deeper into play-in tournament territory, but also essentially erased any realistic chance it had at the fifth seed.

The No. 7 Heat (40-37) is now 1.5 games behind the No. 6 Nets (41-35) and four games behind the No. 5 Knicks (44-33) in the Eastern Conference standings. Miami has just five games left on its regular-season schedule.

There’s still a realistic path for the Heat to catch the Nets, but it won’t be easy. Miami is now two games behind Brooklyn in the loss column, but it’s essentially a three-game gap because the Nets own the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat after sweeping the regular-season series 3-0.

There’s technically still a path for the Heat to catch the Knicks, but it would probably require Miami to win each of its final five regular-season games and New York to lose its five remaining games. The Heat is four games behind the Knicks in the loss column, but it’s essentially five games because Wednesday’s win clinched the season series and head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat.

The only way those head-to-head tiebreakers won’t matter would be if the Heat finishes in a three-way tie with the Nets and Knicks. As the only likely division winner, the Heat would win that three-way tie.

To escape having to qualify for the playoffs through 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.

And now the Heat must also look at the teams immediately behind it, as the No. 8 Atlanta Hawks and No. 9 Toronto Raptors are both just 1.5 games behind Miami.

“I think that’s still the goal,” Vincent said when asked about the Heat’s push to avoid the play-in tournament. “I don’t think anything changes. Obviously, it gets more difficult the more games like this that we lose. But crazier things have happened.”

The hope was that the addition of veteran forward Kevin Love would help solve some of the Heat’s three-point shooting issues, but he hasn’t done that yet.

Love closed Wednesday’s loss with five points on 1-of-7 shooting from deep, four rebounds and two assists in 16 minutes.

Since joining the Heat during the All-Star break last month, Love has shot 23 of 82 (28 percent) from three-point range. Considering he shot 39.2 percent on 6.4 three-points attempts per game last season and has made 37.1 percent of his three-point attempts over his NBA career, more was expected from Love.

Entering Wednesday, Love ranked 86th in three-point percentage among the 90 NBA players who have put up at least 70 three-point attempts since the break. The only players trailing Love on that list were Toronto’s Pascal Siakam, Milwaukee’s Pat Connaughton and Brooklyn’s Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith.

The Heat entered Wednesday with the NBA’s fourth-worst team three-point percentage at 34.1 percent. Miami shot 13 of 39 (33.3 percent) from beyond the arc in its loss to the Knicks.

With Max Strus running into early foul trouble for the Heat, Duncan Robinson made the most of a rare opportunity to play extended minutes.

Strus was called for his third foul with 2:57 left in the first quarter just 2:53 after entering the game off the Heat’s bench. That led to early minutes for Robinson.

Robinson entered for Strus with 2:57 remaining in the opening period and played the rest of the first half to play 14:57 in the first two quarters. He provided a lift, too, making each of three three-point attempts to score nine points in the first half.

Those 15 first-half minutes were already more than Robinson has played in an entire game since logging 17 minutes in a March 6 win over the Atlanta Hawks.

That’s because Robinson has fallen out of the rotation as the Heat’s roster has gotten healthier. He has received seven DNP-CDs (did not play, coach’s decision) in the last 16 games.

But Robinson’s solid first-half stint turned into more minutes in Wednesday’s second half. He played 13 minutes in the final two quarters to finish the game with 12 points on 4-of-6 shooting from deep in 28 minutes.

The 28 minutes are the most Robinson has played in a game in more than three months since logging 36 minutes in a Dec. 20 loss to the Chicago Bulls.

“He kept himself ready and he’s given us a spark in his minutes in the last two games,” Spoelstra said of Robinson. “So I think that’s something we can build on.”

As for Strus, he did not re-enter Wednesday’s game after picking up his third foul in the first quarter.

Heat guard Kyle Lowry sat out Wednesday’s game on the second night of a back-to-back as a precaution after recently returning from a knee injury.

This shouldn’t be a surprise, considering Lowry told reporters following the Heat’s Tuesday morning shootaround that he had not yet been medically cleared to play in both games of a back-to-back. He logged 24 minutes in Tuesday’s loss to the Raptors.

But there was some hope that Lowry could play against the Knicks on Wednesday, at least for a few hours, when he was upgraded from out to questionable on the afternoon injury report. But ultimately the decision was made to hold Lowry out on the back end of the back-to-back.

“We have a very well thought out plan,” Spoelstra said when asked about Lowry on Wednesday. “As long as we’re disciplined with it, he’ll continue to feel better, move better and be able to do what he’s been doing, which has been good. It’s been a big positive for us. But because of our circumstances right now, we can’t get desperate. We have to be smart and responsible to his health. So this was really a group decision on that.”

Lowry, who turned 37 on Saturday, returned in early March from left knee pain that forced him to miss 15 straight games. The Heat has taken a cautious approach with him ever since, limiting his minutes to about 20 per game and playing him off the bench.

Lowry has now missed one game on each of the Heat’s two back-to-backs since he returned, as he also sat out the Heat’s March 18 loss to the Chicago Bulls on the front end of a back-to-back before playing the next night in a March 19 win over the Detroit Pistons.

The Heat has one back-to-back remaining on its regular-season schedule on April 6 against the 76ers in Philadelphia and April 7 against Wizards in Washington. Spoelstra said this week that the team has not yet decided whether Lowry will also be held out of one of those games.

Along with Lowry, the Heat was missing Jamal Cain (G League), Nikola Jovic (back spasms) and Orlando Robinson (G League) against the Knicks.