Takeaways and postgame reaction from Heat’s play-in tournament loss to Hawks. What’s next?

Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 116-105 loss to the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night at Kaseya Center as part of the NBA’s play-in tournament. The Heat now faces a win-or-go-home play-in game on Friday at 7 p.m. in Miami against either the Toronto Raptors or Chicago Bulls:

So many of the Heat’s issues made an appearance in Tuesday’s play-in game, but the one that proved fatal was its inability to grab a rebound.

Defense was a problem for the Heat early on. The Hawks scored 36 first-quarter points and 65 first-half points to enter halftime ahead by 15.

The three-point shooting wasn’t good either. The Heat started just 3 of 15 (20 percent) from three-point range and closed just 11 of 34 (32.4 percent) from beyond the arc.

But the most damaging part of the Heat’s performance was its lack of rebounding.

“The story is the second-chance opportunities,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I thought we defended fairly well, particularly in the last five minutes of the second quarter and the second half. We were just not able to come up with those finishing rebounds.

“We knew this game would be decided ball in the air, ball on the floor, and it certainly was.”

The Hawks outrebounded the Heat 63-39 behind a 22-6 edge in offensive rebounds. That led to Atlanta finishing with a 26-6 advantage in second-chance points.

It marked the first time an opponent has grabbed 16 or more offensive rebounds than the Heat since Miami was outrebounded 23-3 on the offensive glass in a Feb. 14, 2018 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers. Tuesday was actually only the 16th time it has happened in Heat history.

“The ball was bouncing their way the whole game,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said. “But that’s not any type of excuse to why we couldn’t rebound the ball. They beat the hell out of us on the glass. It wasn’t even close.”

Hawks center Clint Capela was the catalyst behind it all, finishing with eight offensive rebounds and 21 total rebounds. Saddiq Bey helped out with four offensive rebounds, and John Collins and Jalen Johnson each added three offensive rebounds.

“When you see the ball bounce in their direction the whole game, it’s deflating,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “As the game went on, we fell short on the defensive end. Not rotating, lack of communication, obviously rebounds.”

The only Heat players who grabbed offensive rebounds on Tuesday were Cody Zeller (three offensive rebounds), Adebayo (two offensive rebounds) and Jimmy Butler (one offensive rebound).

“The rebounding was horrendous,” Butler added.

Because of the Hawks’ dominance on the boards, they put up five more field-goal attempts and seven more free-throw attempts than the Heat. It would have been worse, but the Hawks actually committed more turnovers with 12 to the Heat’s eight.

Despite the rebounding problems, the Heat still put itself in a position rally after falling behind by as many as 24 points in the second quarter. The Heat went on a big 27-8 run to pull within five points with 7:21 left in the third quarter, but that’s the closest it got.

The Hawks were able to finish the period strong to enter the fourth quarter ahead by 13 points.

The Heat cut the deficit to just six points with 7:42 to play. But the Hawks again responded with a 5-0 spurt to push their lead back up to 11 with 6:10 remaining.

The Heat tried one last time to salvage the night, trimming the deficit to seven points with 5:05 to play. But the Hawks again had an answer, using a 10-4 run to take a 13-point lead with 1:40 left and shut the door on the Heat.

Behind their huge rebounding advantage, the Hawks won despite shooting only 10 of 41 (24.4 percent) from three-point range and 16 of 27 (59.3 percent) from the foul line.

The Heat has been one of the NBA’s best defensive rebounding teams for most of the season, but its slippage in that department continued on Tuesday. After entering the All-Star break with the league’s fifth-best defensive rebounding percentage (the percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs) at 73.6 percent through the first 59 games, the Heat posted the 16th-ranked defensive rebounding percentage at 72.6 percent in 23 regular-season games following the break.

Hawks star guard Trae Young’s recent struggles against the Heat have been well-documented. He entered the night averaging 17.3 points on 33.6 percent shooting from the field and 12-of-62 (19.4 percent) shooting from three-point range while dishing out 69 assists to 52 turnovers in his last nine games against the Heat.

Young wasn’t great against the Heat in Tuesday’s win, but he did enough.

Young, who averaged 26.2 points and 10.2 assists per game in the regular season, finished with a team-high 25 points on 8-of-18 (44.4 percent) shooting from the field and 1-of-8 shooting from three-point range, eight rebounds, seven assists and five turnovers in Tuesday’s victory.

The Hawks earned just their third win against the Heat in their last 17 games played in Miami.

The Heat’s two best players, Adebayo and Butler, didn’t have their best games. But Kyle Lowry arguably did ... at least in a Heat uniform.

Adebayo averaged 20.4 points per game on 54 percent shooting from the field in the regular season.

Butler played arguably the best basketball of his NBA career in the final two months of the regular season, averaging 25.6 points, 5.6 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game while shooting an ultra-efficient 61.6 percent from the field in 20 games after the All-Star break.

But Adebayo and Butler combined for only 33 points on an inefficient 11-of-31 (35.5 percent) shooting from the field in the loss.

Adebayo closed with 12 points on 5-of-12 shooting from the field and 2-of-4 shooting from the foul line. It’s only the seventh game this season that he has finished with 12 or fewer points in.

Butler finished with 21 points on 6-of-19 shooting from the field and 9-of-11 shooting from the foul line, four rebounds and nine assists. It’s Butler’s least efficient shooting performance from the field since totaling just nine points on 2-of-8 shooting from the field in a Jan. 2 win over the Los Angeles Clippers

That left Lowry carrying the Heat’s offense with a game-high 33 points on 11-of-16 shooting from the field and 6-of-9 shooting from three-point range. It’s the most points that Lowry has scored in a game in his two seasons with the Heat.

Herro finished with 26 points while shooting 12 of 23 from the field and 2 of 9 on threes.

The Heat shot just 5 of 14 as a team at the rim in Tuesday’s loss.

The Heat stuck with the same starting lineup that it landed on in the final days of the regular season.

The Heat opened Tuesday’s play-in game with the starting lineup of Gabe Vincent, Herro, Butler, Max Strus and Adebayo.

It marked just the fourth time this group has started a game together this season, with the Heat only recently turning to this group consistently. Miami replaced Kevin Love in the starting lineup with Strus with just four games left in the regular season after Love started in his first 17 appearances with the Heat.

Miami’s new starting lineup has produced positive results in a limited sample size. The five-man combination entered outscoring teams by 11.4 points per 100 possessions in 76 minutes together this season.

Despite a slow start to the game, the Heat’s starting group wasn’t the problem on Tuesday. The lineup outscored the Hawks by three points in 11 minutes together.

The main reason behind that success was the unit’s 18-8 run to open the second half.

But after falling into a big hole early, the Heat’s bench rotation evolved throughout the game as Spoelstra searched for answers.

The Heat opened with its new normal bench rotation of Lowry, Caleb Martin and Love.

But Love’s early minutes as the backup center did not go well, as the Hawks totaled 15 points and outscored the Heat by four points in a first-quarter stint that lasted 3:26. And Herro and Strus were each called for two first-quarter fouls.

With Herro and Strus battling foul trouble and the Heat’s defense struggling early on, Spoelstra brought in guard Victor Oladipo at the start of the second quarter.

And with the Hawks going at Love successfully during his short time on the court in the first quarter, Spoelstra subbed in Zeller with 3:30 left in the second quarter to play as the backup center.

The Heat ended up using a 10-man rotation on Tuesday.

Zeller scored two points and grabbed three rebounds in four minutes. Love also played just three minutes.

Oladipo ended the night scoreless, but recorded one assist and one block in nine first-half minutes. He did not play in the second half.

The Heat will have one more opportunity to try to win its way into the playoffs.

As the East’s seventh-place team, the Heat entered the play-in tournament with two chances to win one game to earn a playoff spot.

As a result, the Heat faces a win-or-go-home game on Friday at 7 p.m. on TNT against the winner of Wednesday’s No. 9 vs. No. 10 play-in matchup between the Toronto Raptors and Chicago Bulls (7 p.m., ESPN). Friday’s game will be played at Kaseya Center in Miami.

The Heat struggled against the Raptors and Bulls in the regular season, going 1-3 against Toronto and 0-3 against Chicago.

The winner of this third play-in game Friday clinches the East’s No. 8 playoff seed and begins the playoffs with a first-round series against the top-seeded Bucks in Milwaukee on Sunday at 5:30 p.m. The loser of Friday’s play-in game between the Heat and the winner of Raptors-Bulls is eliminated and misses the playoffs entirely.

The last time the Heat missed the playoffs was in the 2018-19 season.

“It’s win or go home at this point,” Adebayo said. “That’s what the playoffs, play-in, are all about.”

Meanwhile, the seventh-seeded Hawks clinched a first-round playoff series against the second-seeded Boston Celtics with Tuesday’s win.