The aspect that ‘costs’ Miami games, like the loss against the Knicks

Despite that Miami Heat vs. New York Knicks without Jaylen Brunson, the team would still suffer a 140-138 loss on Friday night to drop them to 1-1 in NBA Cup play. At the top The Heat is a bad loss for the Cleveland Cavaliers last wednesday, there was a consistent problem with the team during the early part of the season, and it got to the point where it lost its games.

Looking at Miami’s rebounding, they were once again outscored on the glass, 51-46, especially offensively, 20-15, with New York having eight offensive boards in the fourth quarter alone, and Mitchell Robinson had eight overall. This would follow, looking at Saturday’s stats, the team has the third-worst defensive rebounding percentage in the league, which is the percentage of available defensive rebounds the team grabs, at 66.1 percent, via the Miami Herald.

That led to head coaching Erik Spoelstra saying that now, the rebound was “it’s costing us games.”

“Here we are, and we’ve said enough that we have to fix it. We’re stubborn about it, the things we need to do better. I feel like we’re fully capable of doing it. Is it easy? Winning is not easy in this league,” Spoelstra said.

“We pride ourselves on our rebounding. It just has to get better,” Spoelstra continued. “The league is changing, too. We have to adjust to that. More teams are breaking four guys and breaking their perimeter players. A lot of times, cutting the ball, now that cutter becomes the most dangerous offensive rebound. We just have to make that adjustment and be more aware of it. We’re fully capable of that.”

As consistency is key to improving heat on the glass, it doesn’t help that the team is also dealing with injuries, mostly in the case of big man Bam Adebayo, who is out with a toe injury. How much does Adebayo impact Miami’s ability on the glass?

Well, when he was active through the first eight games, the Heat ranked 14th in said defensive rebounding percentage at 69.8 percent. Moreover, when Adebayo was on the court, Miami had a defensive rebounding percentage of 74 percent, which is good for second in the NBA due to his ability to score boards, but also his ability to shoot out of the box, which greatly affects the other team, although it goes unnoticed.

While the Heat await Adebayo’s return, the team will work on a “collective buy-in” to get better at rebounding, according to Jaime Jaquez Jr.

“It’s just collective participation,” Jaquez said. “I think as a group we understand that we don’t want to keep losing the way we have. We want to be a great team, we just have to go back to the drawing board, go back to watching film, understand what we need to do to clean these things up, know what the problem is. Just getting there is the really hard part.”

Miami is now 7-6 as the team looks to bounce back in a rematch against the Knicks on Monday.