MIAMI — A week from their season opener, the Miami Heat are struggling.
Struggling to produce their first win of the preseason.
Struggling to find anything resembling a coherent offense.
Struggling to rebound and avoid turnovers.
Struggling to regain health.
At 0-5 with only Friday night’s home exhibition against the Memphis Grizzlies remaining in their preseason schedule, the Heat are facing only the second winless preseason in the franchise’s 38 years. The first one came when they went 0-7 in October 2007, on the way to what would be a 15-67 season.
Considering coach Erik Spoelstra rarely plays his regulars in the exhibition finale, it appears the questions only will linger heading into next Wednesday’s season opener against the Orlando Magic at Kia Center.
“We’re trying to figure it out,” newcomer Norman Powell said.
The goal these past two weeks has been to inject life into what last season stood as a moribund offense. Instead, the attack has been listless.
In the wake of Monday night’s 119-118 overtime loss in Atlanta, the Heat this preseason ranked No. 27 in scoring, No. 26 in field-goal percentage, No. 28 in 3-point percentage and No. 22 in turnovers.
“I mean we’re learning the rotation stuff, still,” Powell said. “We haven’t had a set lineup.”
With guard Tyler Herro recovering from last month’s ankle surgery, forward Nikola Jovic missing the past two games with a back issue, first-round pick Kasparas Jakucionis now dealing with hip soreness, it has been a bruised and battered preseason.
It didn’t get any better when center Bam Adebayo was lost for the night two minutes into Monday night’s second half in Atlanta with a knee contusion, with the Heat thereafter losing forward Simone Fontecchio with a facial laceration.
“We’re just trying to learn the spacing, the cuts, the reads offensively, and then defensively, really who we’re going to be,” Powell said.
Complicating the uncertainty has been an inability to rebound, the Heat 25th this preseason in rebounding percentage and 26th in defensive rebounding percentage.
“We pride ourselves in rebounding well,” Spoelstra said. “I think more teams are emphasizing crashing the glass. We have to do a better job with it. We have to take ownership of it. It’s also about setting a tone for our game in a physical way. But our guys understand that.
“The rebounding, we have to own that. We can never relax.”
With so much mix-and-match this preseason due to injuries and absences, even the lineup for opening night is unclear.
Monday marked the first time Adebayo and center Kel’el Ware played together this preseason, and that was only an 8:03 sample size, with the Heat outscored by three during those two segments, even with the Hawks sitting out their entire primary rotation.
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Then there is the question of who fills in for Herro on opening night, with Dru Smith getting the start at point guard in Atlanta a night after Davion Mitchell started at the point in Orlando in his preseason debut.
“We got definitely a lot of things to work on,” forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said. “I think that’s what preseason is about. We figure out those things and we try to make adjustments and fix those.
“Obviously, rebounding is going to be a big one for us. So we just got to make that adjustment going into the season.”
A week to go before the opener, and an unexpected amount of work that still needs to be done.
“We’ll clean up things with our spacing,” Spoelstra said. “I think that’ll help some of the turnovers.”
Open scrimmage
The Heat on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. at Kaseya Center will hold their annual Red, White & Pink Game, an open intrasquad scrimmage benefiting cancer care and research at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute.
Tickets for the event are $10 and available at HEAT.com/RedWhitePink. There also will be $5 parking available at the arena garage.
The event annually features emotional moments with Heat players, coaches and staffers mixing with those suffering from breast cancer and cancer survivors.
