Wes Goldberg

And for the most part, because the Heat don't have an elite shot

creator they don't have that kind of elite isolation player at times it can work right it could start to slow down miami's gears a little bit so that's what the wizards did they were like we're just going to stay home on bam we'll let sar play him one-on-one and in that first quarter sar actually did okay the first few minutes and then bam figured sar out and then you got into the wizard's rotation where poor anthony gill i think is the new jalen rose right now uh and so you know it was at that point it's like well you can't play him one-on-one for some reason

Keefe didn't make an adjustment when it was obvious that like, OK, well, 31 in the first quarter might be a little bit of a problem.

And then eventually they just started double and triple teaming them and started denying them.

But by then it was too little too late.

Yeah, that definitely helped, although they probably didn't need that to beat the Wizards, I would argue.

But look, they're winning the margin battles, right?

I think the Heat, after that hot start to the season, teams figured them out a little bit, and they had to adjust.

And they had to figure out, okay, what's the thing we have to add to our formula to win basketball games?

It's not enough to just outrun teams, which is how they were winning games the first 20, 21 games of the season.

and now they're winning the rebounding battle.

They're winning the turnover battle.

It's just the basic four factors, guys.

I mean, that's what it is, but there's much more of an emphasis on it.

I think the way that Kal-El Ware has played recently has been a really big help for them too.

Ware was not even available for that Wizards game, but he's been available for the other ones, and his rebounding off the bench has been really important.

And the fact that they got Tyler Hero back for some of this stretch, he's out again.

uh, Norm Powell hasn't played, but hero has been able to step into that role.

And then guys like Pella, Larson, Jaime, Hawkins, like these guys are just like glue guys, connecting pieces that are really figuring out sort of their voices on the team now.

Um, as sort of hustle guys in between the lines kind of guys.