It’s still very early, but the Miami Heat is quickly earning the attention of the Eastern Conference’s best.
After opening the season with a blowout win over the defending NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks, the Heat (3-1) earned a hard-fought 106-93 road win over the East favorite Brooklyn Nets (2-3) on Wednesday night at Barclays Center.
It was a competitive game that included 12 lead changes, with both teams using large runs to swing the momentum.
The Heat led by as many as 12 in the first half, but the Nets closed the second quarter on a 22-8 run to enter halftime with a two-point lead.
The Heat responded by scoring 14 straight points in the third quarter to pull ahead by six and never trailed in the final period. When the Nets cut the lead to three with 6:08 to play, the Heat closed the game on a 16-6 run to secure the quality win.
With the Heat’s defense continuing its strong start to the season, the potent Nets offense shot just 38.8 percent from the field. Kevin Durant finished with 25 points on 9-of-18 shooting and James Harden finished with 14 points on 4-of-12 shooting for Brooklyn.
The Heat also outrebounded the Nets 62-42, including 17 offensive rebounds that turned into 31 second-chance points.
Bam Adebayo scored a team-high 24 points and grabbed nine rebounds.
Jimmy Butler finished with 17 points, 14 rebounds, seven assists, one block and four steals.
Kyle Lowry recorded nine points, six rebounds and nine assists.
The Heat now returns home for a matchup against the Charlotte Hornets on Friday night.
Here are five takeaways from the Heat’s win over the Nets:
The Heat entered with the NBA’s top defensive rating and played like an elite defense against what’s expected to be one of the league’s top offenses.
Miami, which entered the contest with the league’s top defensive rating (allowing 92.6 points per 100 possessions), challenged Brooklyn’s high-powered offense with its plethora of tough and physical defenders.
P.J. Tucker spent most of the game defending Durant and Butler accepted the Harden assignment..
Durant finished with 25 points on 18 shots.
Harden ended the night with 14 points on 12 shots.
The Nets are playing without its other star, guard Kyrie Irving, because he’s unvaccinated and ineligible to play in home games by New York City mandate.
The Heat’s early-season three-point shooting struggles continued, but so did its early-season rebounding dominance.
Miami entered shooting 31.6 percent from three-point range in the first three games, which ranked seventh-worst in the NBA.
That number didn’t improve Wednesday, as the Heat made just eight of its 29 three-point attempts (27.6 percent) against the Nets. Brooklyn outscored Miami 42-24 from deep.
The Heat’s outside shooting has been off to start the season. Miami has shot 23 of 89 (25.8 percent) on threes in the last three games.
But the Heat’s early-season success on the boards has helped to negate some of those shooting struggles, as it entered with the NBA’s third-best rebounding percentage (the percentage of available rebounds a team grabs) at 53.7 percent to start the season.
On Wednesday, Miami finished with a sizable edge on the glass. The Heat outrebounded the Nets 62-42, including 17 offensive rebounds that resulted in 31 second-chance points.
This rebounding advantage helped the Heat finish with 11 more shot attempts than the Nets, which made up for some of the Miami’s shooting issues.
The Heat’s rotation has remained consistent through the first four games of the season.
The starting lineup of Kyle Lowry, Duncan Robinson, Jimmy Butler, P.J. Tucker and Bam Adebayo is a constant when those five are healthy.
And the bench rotation looks just as set, with Tyler Herro, Dewayne Dedmon, Max Strus and Markieff Morris consistently completing the nine-man rotation.
Dedmon’s minutes as the Heat’s backup center continue to be a positive.
Dedmon entered Wednesday’s game midway through the first quarter and made an immediate impact. He recorded six points and five rebounds in his initial seven-minute stint off the bench, with the Heat outscoring the Nets 18-9 during that stretch.
Dedmon finished with 14 points and nine rebounds.
Surviving the Dedmon minutes are important because it almost always means Adebayo is not on the court, with Adebayo and Dedmon rarely sharing the court.
Dedmon took over as the Heat’s backup center shortly after he signed last season and provided much-needed quality minutes when Adebeyo went to the bench then, too. Those minutes had been a negative before the addition of Dedmon, but the Heat outscored opponents by 17.1 points with Dedmon on the court as the backup center last regular season.
That trend has continued this season, and that’s encouraging for the Heat.
After sending undrafted rookie Marcus Garrett to the G League for further development, it looks like the Heat’s plan is very different for its other two-way contract player.
While Garrett was sent to the Sioux Falls Skyforce on Tuesday, two-way contract wing Caleb Martin remains with the Heat.
That’s not surprising, considering Martin brings real NBA experience even as a two-way contract player. He spent the past two seasons on a standard contract with the Hornets, when he played in 72 games over his first two NBA seasons.
It doesn’t sound like Martin is going to the G League anytime soon.
“He’s always on our mind,” coach Erik Spoelstra said of Martin ahead of Wednesday’s game. “So he has experience. I feel right now he’s a plug-and-play guy. We all feel very comfortable with that. In a game like this where you have two prolific scorers, there’s a possibility of foul trouble and things like that. I think he’s a great 3-and-D guy that can just fit right in. So he’ll be ready. He has really been working.”
Players on two-way contracts like Garrett and Martin can be on their NBA team’s active list for as many as 50 regular-season games this season. Martin was active against the Nets and has been active in three of the Heat’s first four games.
