Coup’s Takeaways: Wiggins Explodes for 42 Against Charlotte as Heat End Ten Game Losing Streak

The game where Miami’s 10 game losing streak may have officially become a streak came a couple weeks ago when Charlotte came to town and gave the HEAT their fourth straight.

Tonight, the HEAT had a chance to get back in the good graces of the basketball gods against the very same team. And revenge, it turns out, is a dish best served with a ton of jumpers.

After a fairly standard start, Miami up five behind 11 combined points from Andrew Wiggins and Tyler Herro as Charlotte took the first timeout. Then the version of the HEAT that had shown up far too often during the streak made an appearance, a series of sloppy Miami turnovers stalling them out as Charlotte’s role players made threes for a 13-0 run. A couple minutes in the second quarter, after Miami was whistled for a rare inbounding violation on a made shot, it was Hornets by 12.

It started to turn when Haywood Highsmith hit an incredibly tough turnaround, baseline jumper – maybe the first turnaround jumper he’s hit at the pro level – against the shot clock. From there it was a monstrous 28-6 run over the course of about nine minutes, Charlotte’s offense suddenly in shambles against Miami’s dismantling pressure. With Charlotte pressuring the arc just as most opponents have done of late, Herro and Wiggins continued to push downhill, one short floater after another turning the tide.

By halftime it was 57-47, Miami having taken a mere 14 shots from long range as they racked up points in the paint.

The lead held through the early portions of the third even as the defense softened a bit, Wiggins dropping in mid-range jumpers against Charlotte guards that had little chance to contest and Kel’el Ware finishing in the paint against those same smaller players. Mostly, though, Wiggins couldn’t miss and Charlotte didn’t have anyone who could make life tougher for him, their most mobile size in Miles Bridges spending the game defending Bam Adebayo. By the time Wiggins hit his third three of the quarter – to reach 30 points on 12-of-16 shooting at that point – Miami’s advantage was 20 with Charlotte showing few signs of mounting resolve.

Miami up, 96-75, going into the fourth, Wiggins and Herro still carrying the offensive load, the end of the streak in sight as long as the offense could put together a decent enough final stretch to hold the line.

The fourth quarter was hardly perfect, Charlotte pushing back within 13 midway through the period as Miami’s offense hit a rut. But another burster from Wiggins ended any threat in a hurry as the HEAT cruised to the finish line, taking it 122-105.

You don’t need to look any further than Wiggins and Herro for why Miami turned this game around after their early bout with messy turnovers and won so comfortably, little in question in the second half.

Wiggins had one of his best games in a couple years, just days after putting up a 20 point second quarter against Houston, and the past couple outings have been an excellent example of why he fits in so seamlessly as a third offensive option who can carry you for minutes on end. Wiggins is not the sort of player who is going to handle the ball a ton or run 30 pick-and-rolls in a game, but he can punish mismatches in all the ways he punished mismatches today. With Bridges on Adebayo Charlotte simply didn’t have any more wings left for Wiggins and he did just about anything he wanted with the advantages, post-ups and mid-range pullups and threes right over the top of his defenders. Not only were his 42 points (16-of-21 shooting) his highest total since 2016-17 but he set a new career high in made jumpers with 11. He won’t do this every night because nobody shoots this well all the time and there will be tougher matchups ahead, but when he came over in the trade we noted that he offered Miami a third player who could go for 30 when needed on any given night and after settling in he’s been just that.

Herro, meanwhile, continued his adjustment to the adjustment, scoring 29 on 19 shots, as teams continue to send high pressure at him at the arc to limit his attempts from three. The need today is for the ball to be in Herro’s hands and for him to create, not for him to be finding a perfect balance of playing on and off the ball. His solution, then, has been to take the pressure and use it to find his driving lanes, which has turned into weeks of intermediate runners and floaters, often off one leg as he decelerates in the lane. It may not be the optimized version of Herro that we saw in the early months of the season – changes in shot profile aside, he was never going to stay that hot forever lest he was going to have the best shooting season in league history – but it’s the one Miami needs right now to keep the offensive train on the tracks.

The losses to Detroit and Houston were close enough and well played enough that the feeling after those games was that had they not added onto an existing losing streak, they would have been games you shrug off and immediately place in the dustbin of the mind, Cade Cunningham’s buzzer beater aside. In a roundabout way this game would have qualified in much the same way, a largely forgettable night – Wiggins’ explosion aside – against a lottery-bound team that few would have remembered.

Instead, this is the game that will always be the one that ended the 10-game losing streak, the one that turned around the vibes when the HEAT were in dire need of a positive feeling.

Now everyone can remember what a streak like this feels like, both as a reminder to never want to feel that way again and as a grounding memory, the sort that makes other temporary, and regular, setbacks in a regular season schedule seem far more ordinary.

As far as the standing the HEAT didn’t do anything but maintain the status quo as Atlanta beat Philadelphia and Detroit – catching them isn’t really an option anymore – beat the Pelicans. Miami remains in the No. 10 spot, a game back of Chicago for No. 9 with the Bulls owning that tiebreaker.

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By ML Staff. Courtesy of NBA.