Why are the Heat struggling on the road? Naming 3 key areas of improvement

Home is absolutely where the heart is, but the road is where NBA teams make themselves most viable.

The Miami Heat (13-11) have struggled away from the Kaseya Center, where they’ve won eight of 12 appearances. Playing on the road, though, appears to be where even some of Miami’s finest margins tend to come undone. Losing another close one against the Detroit Pistons on Monday night continued the Heat’s road woes, but Bam Adebayo is among those who won’t allow the loss (which halted the team’s season-best four-game win streak) to upend their collective optimism. He often acknowledges the difficulty of winning in the NBA, especially when you routinely give opponents easy shots at the basket before their offense further opens up.

While that partially explains the Heat losing 125-124 in overtime, their loss continued a Jekyll-and-Hyde-esque theme in performance this season, when it comes to home vs. road. Among the seven East teams with a record of .500 or better, Miami, the Milwaukee Bucks (14-11) and Orlando Magic (17-11) are the only ones with a losing record away from home; the latter two have bypassed the Heat in the Eastern Conference standings despite either starting slowly (Milwaukee lost eight of its first 10 games) or missing important star power (Orlando is without leading scorers Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner).

Let’s examine a few potential areas of improvement for Miami on the road.

Stronger finishes

With Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro, the Heat have two of the most reliable scorers and late-game performers in the league. Butler, who enjoyed a monster performance against Detroit despite the loss, remains as efficient as ever and can still take over games. Although the six-time All-Star enjoyed season-highs in points (35), rebounds (19) and assists (10) to extend his franchise record for triple-doubles to 13, he wasn’t happy about the result, given the close margins.

Both of the Heat’s losses in Detroit this season have come by a combined three points. They’ve lost six games by three or fewer points, with four of those coming on the road. No matter how well a team plays at home, contending is tough without finishing better. In clutch time, over a game’s final five minutes with the score within five, Herro (31 points) trails only Butler (33) for the overall team lead in scoring but is shooting only 29.4 percent in those situations.

But 27 of Herro’s clutch-time points have come away from South Florida, including his Monday heroics to force overtime. Even if the efficiency isn’t pretty, even Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra acknowledges how invaluable Herro is to keep Miami’s offense afloat when it matters.

“We’ve already had two games where we’ve had incredible comebacks and both times come up short,” Spoelstra said on Monday. “The lesson would be to not get down 19 and play with that kind of desperation throughout the game. … We wouldn’t have even been into overtime if he [Herro] didn’t knock down some really tough shots.”

Better defense

Entering Monday, Miami had the NBA’s sixth-best defense dating to Nov. 18, but the Pistons did away with such progress en route to the Heat yielding their second-highest point total of the season (lost 135-122 to the Denver Nuggets). The common variable in those losses? Both were on the road. In fact, that applies to each of the Heat’s five worst defensive performances this season.

Miami is only 1-8 when allowing at least 115 points in a game, including an 0-6 mark when doing so away from home.

A key culprit has been opponents running wild on 3s. The Heat rank 27th in 3-pointers allowed when on the road (15.3), ahead of only the Utah Jazz, New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks. Looking even deeper, Miami is struggling to simply make home teams feel uncomfortable in familiar surroundings. When hosting, Heat opponents are shooting 40.7 percent on 3s without a dribble, which is the fifth-highest mark allowed among all teams entering Tuesday.

Miami is struggling to contain wide-open 3s as well. It’s allowing teams to shoot 43.2 percent on wide-open 3s (when the closest defender is 6-plus feet away). That is third-worst in the NBA so far.

There could be a myriad of potential solutions to the issue, but most people on the team acknowledge the importance of containing drives and not allowing easy shot attempts to flow once opponents are in rhythm. Plus, Miami does a fine job limiting dribble penetration at home, allowing the fifth-lowest shooting percentage (60.3 percent) in the restricted area at home, per NBA.com. For whatever reason, that figure skyrockets on the road, where the Heat must tighten up to have hope of remaining in the East playoff picture.

Often formulaic when describing his team’s best course of action, Spoelstra was frank in assessing what he wants to see more from his defense: “To make them miss.”

That seems fair enough!

Possession control

Rebounding has been an on-and-off endeavor for the Heat this season. Before its 8-3 stretch entering Monday, Miami had the league’s seventh-best rebound rate after opening the season ranked 25th. The Heat aren’t a distinctly tall team, especially when Adebayo’s unmatched defensive versatility takes him away from the basket, should he blitz a pick-and-roll or close out on a perimeter shot.

Miami lost the rebound battle against Detroit on Monday (minus-eight), but one of its biggest issues has been allowing easy buckets from losing rebounding battles. The Heat are allowing 14.5 second-chance points per game on the road (22nd among all teams), which is far from ideal. It’s almost impossible to keep point totals within reason without winning the possession battle, even when you have a top-1o offense on the season. Going shot for shot with almost any team in today’s NBA is tough because it takes just a few moments for a one-possession battle to grow into a blowout.

After Monday’s loss, even despite Butler’s 12 free-throw attempts matching his teammates combined, the Heat are 1-6 in games decided by one possession this season, marking the worst such record in the NBA. How Miami fixes its road woes remains to be seen, but its star player remains ready to do all it takes to correct the issues before it’s too late.

“Put all the pressure on my side,” Butler said. “I take it. I love it. I love all the adversity. Maybe I gotta do better — maybe I gotta do more.

“But I hate losing. I despise losing.”

(Top photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)