Bam Adebayo, Norman Powell warn amid January trend

With The Miami Heat want to end the current road trip which is good, it was disappointing, and the final result was a 127-110 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. While it is The Heat are dealing with the ongoing absence of Tyler Hero and second, the team still had a troubling start to the year, attracting attention Bam Adebayo and Norman Powell.

Miami had a fast start to the season, starting 14-7, but since then the team has gone 9-15, specifically 6-7 in January, which has kept the Heat from winning back-to-back games. Those results put Miami at 23-22, which puts them in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, a place they are all too familiar with.

“You just need to be more consistent“Adebayo said, according to The Miami Herald, after recording 32 points and 10 rebounds. “We can’t get ahead. Every play has to be; we hold the line on defense from the start of the game. And then from the start of the game until the start of the third, and we take it from there. We have too many games where one night we’re going to play great defense. Another night, we’re going to take off somehow. So that’s got to be the difference. We just have to be more consistent in that direction, even if we miss or we kick.”

Norman Powell on Heat mindset amid inconsistency

The team’s inconsistency can also be attributed to health, as Herro and Kel’el Ware missed the rest of the road, Heat guard Davion Mitchell nurtures shoulder injury. Missing a bunch of key pieces in Miami’s rotation gave the head coach Erik Spoelstra a tough task in throwing out lineups that could fit.

In addition to the offense going through its kinks, the defense also faltered. Although they are 10th in defensive rating, opposing teams have scored a ton lately.

“Our defense has to get it back on track,” Spoelstra said. “We’ve had nine games in a row where we’ve given up over 115 points, and that’s not a winning formula for us. We know that.”

While the Heat hope to get healthier and find consistency, it will also take some mental clarity to pick up wins, an area Powell says they’ve worked on before.

“You can’t get excited about one win,” Powell said after scoring 18 points Thursday. “You’ve got another game ahead of you, and we just have to stick to the game plan. We can’t have too many lulls, five, six minutes where we don’t know what we’re doing defensively, we don’t know what we’re trying to get out of it offensively. We’ve got to be on the same page together and stick it out before the streak, and we’ve got to get back to making a mark on plays multiple times in a row.”

Either way, Miami looks to bounce back Saturday night against the Utah Jazz.