Miami Heat: Shredded by Bulls guards, fall to 14-11 | Five on the Floor

Welcome to the latest episode of Five on the Floor and the Five Reasons Sports Network. Thanks for joining us on your favorite podcast app, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Red Circle. Also, the Five Reasons YouTube channel. Make sure you hit like, subscribe, and turn the notifications on. Also, check out Off the Floor. It's on Discord now, and it's much better. It's interactive, not just with us, but also with other Heat fans. We've got eight different channels on there that you can check out. It's $2.99 per month. Make the investment. You won't get more Heat content anywhere else. The description has the link here on the YouTube channel, the podcast feeds, and also you can find it at the top of the Five Reasons Sports Twitter page. Now, today's episode. Welcome to Five on the Floor, a daily insider show on the Miami Heat and the NBA, featuring Ethan Skolnick, Greg Silvander, and Alex Toledo, plus others from the Five Reasons Sports Network. All right. Welcome back to Five on the Floor. Here's today's floor plan. I'm back. It's Ethan Skolnick. You can follow me, Ethan J. Skolnick, with Five Reasons Sports. We got Greg Silvander. You can follow me, Greg Silvander, on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it. Alex and Brady are at the game tonight, so make sure to check out their Twitter handles, BradyHawk305 and TropicalBlanket. The Miami Heat lose to the Chicago Bulls for the second time this season, a totally different loss than the last one. The last one, they were up more than 20, blew the game. This time, they fell behind 33-8 to start, kept crawling back to as close as 5 or 6, and then kept letting it go. We're going to get into what happened here tonight, but to have a game where you don't have a lead from start to finish at home, and I understand the injuries. We'll talk about them in the injury report. You don't have Bam. You don't have Tyler. You don't have Heywood Ismith. You didn't have Josh Richardson tonight. Interesting, because I thought the last one really hurt them, that last player being out, because they didn't have another solution there. And I guess we're going to start here, Greg, with the player of the night, because I feel like as we go to this, it will lead us into the biggest problem that happened this evening. And now on Five on the Floor, it's time for the gamer of the night, sponsored by Rock Esports Center, the place to eat, drink, and play all day. Host your next birthday party with them. Located at 15305 South Dixie Highway in Palmetto Bay, they've got a 5,500-square-foot state-of-the-art center equipped with all the high-end power. Play all-day passes available for just $25, but if you mention five reasons, it's just $20. So mention five reasons or five RSN, you get to play all day for $20. And now, the gamer of the night. All right, so it's Kobe White tonight. And look, there are a couple of other guys you could have gone with, or we could have gone with, Greg, and they weren't on the Heat side, although we'll talk about some of the Heat players who played pretty well. They wasted pretty good games from a couple of guys, but. Yeah. But, but look, I mean, we can talk about Vucevic, who had, he looked like Orlando Vucevic against them, 24-12-7. And also, Ayo DeSumo, off the bench, had 24. Career night. Career night, 24-8-5. But I'm going with Kobe White, because it started with him, and he ended up with 26-7-11. I mean, look at those three stat lines. Seriously, like, I mean, near triple doubles for those three guys. And they don't have Zach Levine, but to me, Kobe White was a plus 20 that was the best on the Bulls team. But he, and to a certain extent, Ayo, symbolized the problem tonight. They could not do anything at the point of attack defensively. Those guards got in the paint any time they wanted. It was the reason for the points in the paint disparity tonight. It wasn't the bigs. It was a little bit Vucevic, but mostly it was the guards. And that was just a horrific defensive performance, in my view. Not as bad as, you know, that one, that last thing we saw at home. We remember that one. But this was, this was just, it was just ugly. They couldn't guard anybody. They couldn't guard anybody. They shot 53% at the rim. That's the, that would be like, that ranks in the 16th percentile per cleaning the glass. Like, do you know what kind of formula that is? This game was so frustrating. It was awful to watch. I'm glad you mentioned Kobe White. As a Heat fan, I wish Kobe White would find his way to Miami. I'd love for them to invest in him as a player. I think that he tries really hard on defense, has some of, some interesting athleticism that I think is underrated, can shoot it better than I ever thought that maybe he would become as a shooter. I'm looking now, he's 43% on the season. So yes, if the basketball gods are listening, let's get Kobe White down to Miami. Forget the trade talk. But this game was awful, Ethan. I, these are the games throughout the season where you want to throw your hands up and feel like this team is not going to get it done. And I just, I remember so many of these, we all should. And just remember that you get to the other side of them. That's the only way that I can figure you process this, because this was straight up bad loss. Like there's no, we're not going to get around this. Like, I mean, Hopkins shows, shows some stuff. We'll talk about it, but this was a bad loss and it had a lot to do with the fact that Kobe White controlled the game offensively from start to finish. I think it actually kind of helped them. The Caruso was out actually. They got, they got more of, and I like Caruso as a player, but he got hurt early in the game and they got, you got more of IO and more of Kobe, both of whose quickness hurt Miami in a way that maybe Caruso would not have. And I actually think, look, I joked during Twitter that, oh, look, there's a team in this game that seems to be benefiting from their star to guard being out. And it's not Miami actually, because we'll talk about Tyler here as we go forward. But you know, there are certain guys in this league and that it's that the stats don't correlate with winning. And I know there's been accusations of that with Tyler, which I don't really agree with, even though I was the one that came up with this whole thing about how he scores better in losses. But sometimes there, there are times he has to. Zach Levine seems to be one of those players where it just doesn't add up like, like he puts up big numbers, but for what it's empty. It's for the most part, they, and Eric Reed and, and John Crotty kept commenting on this tonight. Cause I watched this one from home. The ball just popped with Chicago tonight in a way that it has not for the bulls in the past couple of years. And I don't think it's a coincidence. They're five and two without Levine. Anytime that you sacrifice players like that and the record gets better. It's an interesting conversation. And if I were Chicago, I would be investing in the development of Kobe white and Patrick Williams to first round picks that they have instead of continuing with this Levine DeRozan stuff, honestly, I, and DeRozan played well tonight, but we know what tomorrow is at this stage. And I just, I mean, I look, I'm not here to program the bulls, but I'm just saying if there was a pivot, that's the pivot you make because I do think that there's value Patrick Williams played much better when he's got more time also. So that's kind of what I came out of it from a bulls perspective. Agree. It's crazy that they don't act quicker. It seems like Zach Levine is like a bad work week away from being a Hassan Whiteside Michael Beasley level empty stat player. He obviously has not exhibited any of some of the locker room issues or whatever you want to call that maturity issues that some of those guys have shown. But I just mean the empty calories when it relates to points and counting stats. And so, but there's no excuse. The heat ended up getting outplayed by this team. So you can say, Oh, Levine's out. So now they're more connected and they're playing with the team. That's actually wanting to be out there on the court. Well, the heat need to be ready for that. And I don't understand quite where they're landing when Jimmy Butler is out there. You're getting performances from other guys that we're going to talk about here in a minute that like, you would imagine that like, if you read it before the game started, I would have probably taken the box score for our box score watchers out there. Shout out to y'all. I would have taken this box score as a heat victory. Wouldn't you have Ethan? Yeah, I would have, and I want to go through some of it and we'll hold Hawkins out for more conversation in our next segment, but he led the heat with 22, six of 14 from the floor tonight, nine of 10 from the line. I mean, he's getting to the line lately for four rebounds, four assists, a couple of turnovers and four fouls. And then you look down the line here, you know, Caleb Martin did pretty much what Caleb's done lately. 17.7 of 13 from the field, three or four from three, 11 rebounds and four assists. You get 17, 11 and four from Caleb. There was, there was kind of, there were a couple of missed bunnies in there. There was one baseline one. I remember I texted you guys like, oh, that's big. Cause there was a point that they were, they could've got within four and they didn't. And then it kind of went the other way again. And they had a bunch of those sequences. But then you look at the rest of this to me, what jumps out other than Jimmy, which we'll touch on more. I don't think this was a great Duncan game. He did end up with 11 points, but he didn't close for a reason. I think he was not particularly effective tonight, but they got 11 of 24 overall, including seven made three pointers, uh, a combined 12 rebounds and seven assists and 33 points from Lowry and love. Oh, and they lost and lost like guys that were just like, okay, can you get it from them every night? I think Kevin's been more consistent about that part of it. Although Kyle's upside has been higher at times, but yeah, I mean, and they had to play him. I mean, Kyle played 39 minutes again. And part of it is Josh wasn't in, he experimented with RJ Hampton for nine minutes. It actually was a plus six in those minutes, but he wasn't going to stay with him long. How are they going to do this? Are we really going to make it to January with Lowry playing this many minutes? I can't believe this. I, it almost feels irresponsible. Although I don't know what the option is like when Josh is not there, how do you like, what do you do with the minutes other than playing Hampton more, I guess. And maybe they'll experiment with it a little bit of Josh, but we don't think Josh is going to miss more time going forward because it's an illness situation. It's not, it's not an injury, but you know, Tyler will be back. Then Tyler will be back. But, but to one other point here, okay. Before we get to Hawkins and a little more depth, they just got to get more from Jimmy some of these nights. And I, I, you know, we, we did a whole podcast on it, Alex, me and Brady, we touched on it and the final numbers are okay. I mean, I mean, 20.7 rebounds, seven assists. He did have 10 free throw attempts. He made eight of them. Okay. You'll take all of that. And he had some deflections late in the game, but he's six of 15 from the floor. Again, this is another game where he's under 50%. And I, I don't know what's happening there, Greg. And we, we, we got into it, you know, with the percentages that we talked about, you know, where he shoots from on the floor and he's been much less effective around the rim this year. And it felt that way again, like sometimes he just doesn't want to go in there. And my whole thing is again, he had an okay game, but on nights like this, like Kobe white should not be a better player than Jimmy Butler. Like you have to have more from him when you don't have BAM, you don't have Tyler, you don't have what Haywood provides defensively. And you didn't have Josh. I mean, it's just, you, you need a 28 point game from Jimmy Butler on 54% shooting. They didn't get it tonight. Or on top of the scoring responsibilities, which I think leads into, I mean, they are missing BAM and Tyler, and I think both will be back soon. It looks like Tyler could be back sooner than BAM, which I'm surprised. I thought BAM was going to beat him by a game or two. Anyway, you know what I look at with Jimmy? I look at steals and blocks. You can look at counting stats with Jimmy and you can tell is, is he engaged? And like, if you use prize pick, shout out the code five. It's always like at one and a half, they've got his, his projection for blocks and steals all the way down to 0.5, because he hasn't been getting a ton of them lately. That to me shows how active he is. Is he doing that free safety? Jalen Ramsey, I'm going to, you know, pick six, this ball and do that kind of stuff. It hasn't been happening. And so to me, that is the indicator that Jimmy is not doing the Jimmy things defensively. And that's weird. And so I hope that it's coasting. I hope that he understands probably that he's having to conserve as much as he can because right now he's carrying things, but tonight six and 15, very efficient. He got a bunch of stuff from other guys, still no steals, no blocks. I know it's counting stats, but if you watch those and watch the correlation to heat victories, it's amazing what happens when that guy gets in those passing lanes. He seemed to pick it up in the last three minutes, but again, you need it at other stages. I mean, he had, he had the one deflection. I don't know why that didn't count as a steal. I have to think back to the ex Zac play, but then there was the other one where he knocked the ball away again, they double teamed. And then he had Hawkins went after the ball at the same time. He knocked it off the Hawkins, but I just, I don't feel the consistent impact. And now I, what I'm afraid of, and Brady, we've talked about this the other night, like Jim, like Bam and Tyler are going to come back. And then I feel like that's when Jimmy's going to rest. Yeah. Right. Jimmy and Kyle are going to be like, can we go to the Bahamas please? Right. I don't think we're ever going to see a full team this year until maybe like a week before the end of the regular season where they're scrambling to get out of the plan. I just, I don't know that like, that's where this seems to be trending. And I like this roster. I said this repeatedly. I think this is a better team than they had last year. I liked the roster and the fact that they can plug in other guys is terrific, but eventually you want to see what the thing looks like whole. And I just don't know that we're going to see that. And on the nights that they don't have a couple of those others, whether you're talking about the defensive and offensive impact of Bam, the offensive impact of Tyler, the defensive impact of Hay Smith and all the other things that Josh has been doing to kind of plug gaps. Like as Josh has not been great defending the point of attack this year. He has not, but it would have been better with him out than it was without. They still need him. And I just, so it was just a meltdown in terms of, and here's the other stat you mentioned activity. And then we'll get into the play of the night here. You mentioned activity, five turnovers for the Bulls. See, that's the number I look at when they're not forcing turnovers. Typically they can't even score as much as they scored tonight, but when they're not forcing turnovers, they don't win a lot. And that's because it is, it is correlated. Correlation is not causation. All the thing I say all the time, it is correlated with activity and it just wasn't enough activity tonight. They didn't make the Bulls feel them at all. And again, that to me starts with the best player that you have on the floor. Correct. And that still is supposed to be Jimmy Butler. And yet there are a lot of nights that I'm like, why is Hawkins doing more Jimmy things than Jimmy's doing? And that is a way for us to queue up play of the night. And now it's time for the insurance by Lynette play of the night sponsored by insurance by Lynette.com at a aggressive insurance agency. You can reach out to our friend Lynette at 954-581-8800 that's 954-581-8800 or insurance by Lynette.com that's insurance by Lynette.com with two N's and two T's your best play for auto insurance, homeowners insurance, condo insurance, life insurance, or a retirement program. Reach out to Lynette at insurance by Lynette.com. All right. So there were a few things we could have gone to tonight, even on the heat side, but I decided to go with Jaime Hawkins for one reason. It's funny. I wasn't the only one who picked up on this, but there, there was a play where he, he likes that spin to the middle. He has certain tendencies, you can kind of tell, right? Like Caleb has that behind the back dribble and then he has the, you know, the closeout baseline thing. Josh has that kind of little slither into the lane to get to the push shot or to get to that midi. And we know like Duncan has that slide step, right? Where Duncan likes to kind of, you know, give a little fake and slide to the corner. He's been using that a lot. Didn't see it tonight, but typically we see it. Well, Hawkins has a tell now where he, a lot of times he gets the ball towards the baseline, often on the left block. And he's, he ducks under and he spins baseline. And it spins from the baseline to the middle and he got stripped. And it looked to me like they scouted him that way. Like it was clear that they, they doubled him on the, next time he got the ball in that same place, he faked in, got, got, got them to go up. On it. And then was able to turn. He didn't spit baseline. He spun back the other way. Fake spin. That is incredible growth. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Like he's making adjustments on the fly. And I said this on playback and everybody should be joining us on the playback feeds. Uh, thanks to eternal for sucking it up tonight. Cause I know he's not feeling good. Ben, uh, Gad and Matt were on there with me as well. Remember Kendrick Nunn. He was the most productive rookie they've had in a long time. People forget that he outproduced Tyler that first month of the season. Right. All rookie first team. Yep. And I kept saying and writing, okay, what does he do when they, when they scout him? He never had a counter. Like they figured it out with Kendrick Nunn. Like he was not going to pass. If he came off the pick and roll shot was going up. Okay. So they started to overplay him and he could not adjust to it. Right now he's out of the NBA, right? Honey Hawk has, you see a new counter every game, right? He made the adjustment to the scouting report, literally on the next possession. Do you understand how ridiculous that is? I don't care if he's a 22 year old rookie, Karan Butler was a 22 year old rookie. And we've talked a lot about the comparisons there. That's not normal. It's just not normal. And so you said it, he's the thing to take out of this game tonight, even though things didn't go perfectly for him, but he price pays, keeps, and they keep bumping his point total by a point. And he keeps blowing through it tonight. It was 15 and a half. He sends up scoring 22. And I'll, I'll just, I'll say this again. Okay. I see Jaime Hawk is doing more Jimmy Butler things on a regular basis lately. Then I see Jimmy Butler doing Jimmy Butler things. And as promising as that may be for the heat's future, it doesn't help the heat's present enough. And that's what I would take out of that. We'll get to the injury report here in a second, Greg, but I guess the one positive to take out of this whole thing is this is the only, I think their third loss to a losing team so that they have been better about that this year. Yeah. But the schedule gets tougher next week. Like they go to, they have Minnesota in here and then they go to Orlando. And I actually, I think that we'll get to the injury situation in a second, but they're now at 14 and 11 through 25. It's kind of another marker. Yeah. They look like a 45 win team kind of right. They remind me of some of those Dwayne transition year teams, but maybe a little bit more complete across top to bottom. You know what I mean? Like bam out of bio is significantly better than Jermaine O'Neill or whoever player two was for Dwayne in any of those years. So it's feels a little weird to make that comparison, but I just mean in terms of where their seating will be, they're feeling like a four or five and they're feeling like they're a move away. And so I'm in this weird spot where I've said that I wanted Lowry's expired expiring contract to be used. Now I've started to waffle on that thinking that maybe it's not the prudent approach, but games like tonight, it's gonna, they play Chicago again. So they're going to have to get that one. That'll be really deflating if they don't. And then you're right. They got some interesting teams coming in. And then you also have Christmas day against Philadelphia. That's a game that I think that it will be important for Miami to look good on their home floor. I know that these are things probably that people will scoff at, but I think this team needs these kinds of moments on the national scale as much as possible to remind themselves that they, where they just were, they were finals bound. They were Eastern conference finals bound. So that's, that's what I hope comes out of this, but tonight was just dreadful. Well, they were Eastern conference finals, final champions in large part, because Jimmy Butler played like a superstar. And I, we've talked so much about the difference between playoff, Jimmy and regular season, Jimmy, but I don't know that we've gotten the best version of regular season, Jimmy yet. And that's until they do until they get the other pieces back, it's going to be like this. It's going to be a couple of steps forward, one step back. Just hope you don't take two or three steps back and have to deal with it from there. But we'll talk about more of those games as, as we go forward into them. And obviously they got to get the win against Chicago in the next one. Cause that, that would, then you lose three or four to the bulls, a team that we know is being blown up. Like that's it's that's bad. Okay. We do want to give you at this point though, the latest injury report. And now it's time for the official five on the floor injury report sponsored by our friend Eric Rubenstein, the personal injury attorney born and raised in Lauderdale, Florida lives in Miami, went to St. Thomas. He's a South Florida guy and a huge Miami heat fan. But the important thing is he can help you get your money that you deserve when something happens to you. So reach out to our guy, Eric Rubenstein, again, ericrubenstein.com or ask about me. I got you on Instagram and now the injury report. All right. Well, a little bit of good news here. Tyler Hero, I guess, told reporters tonight that he's planning on coming back Monday or Wednesday. So that's directly from him. So you don't need it from anywhere, anyone else. It's longer than we thought. You know, we had kind of heard two to four weeks. It looks like it's going to be five, a little over five weeks. Yeah. And, and I do think that they're holding him out to make sure first he's a hundred percent for himself. He doesn't re injure it. But additionally, I think they'd like him to be as, as well conditioned as possible before he goes back on the court. Yeah. And I don't know if that's optics or anything, but like, they're going to put him back in the starting lineup and, and you don't want him to have minutes restrictions and all that kind of stuff. He may have a small one, but we know Spelcher never pays attention to his own and it's restrictions. You've just got to go. He's just got to go. I he's going to, he's going to join the moving train at this point. He is going to start. I would be stunned if he comes off the bench for more than one game. And I don't think it's even going to be that. It's just, they haven't created enough separation as a team. Look at the record, but come on, what are we doing? They're not 10 games above 500 and you don't want to mess with that. What are we, what they just lost to the bulls on their home floor. And as good as Duncan has been, he's had tonight was okay. Okay. Game at best for Duncan. He had a really good game. The last game, you know, poor game, the game before he's been really good. The, the upside with hero is higher. And my, my whole thing on this is they have Tyler signed for longer and they have, they have him signed at more money than and you gotta know what you're doing with these guys and who's who and what is what precisely. And that's, that's just the way, that's just the way it is. Like they need these next two months, whenever they get as many healthy bodies as they can to see if it can work with Tyler as a starter and as a closer with this current group, because we're going to do a, and tonight was weird with the closing because obviously they didn't have all their other people. But I mean, I think they're, they have four closers now once everybody's and it's, it's, it's Bam, Tyler, Jimmy and Hawkins. And the fifth one, there are four choices. It's you're basically looking at it could be Duncan for offense. It could be Caleb. It could be Heywood. If you want to go strictly defensive, it could be Lowry. If you need a point guard out there and, and probably not Kevin, even though Kevin closed tonight, cause they didn't have any other options, by the way, we haven't mentioned it a lot, but, but a big part of this game was Orlando Robinson could not do anything with Vusevich tonight and barbecue chicken. And Shaq says, yeah, I mean, he went, they went to him five out of six possessions. Vusevich again, looked like Orlando Vusevich where he actually operated in the paint and he just destroyed them tonight. Kevin Love look good though. Love was better, but I'm just saying it's the fact that they're having to count on Kevin and Kyle, to the extent that they are, they're going to need rests. And so they need to get some of those other guys back. So to that point, no real update on Highsmith stage, but bam, it looks like you said it could be bam coming back after Tyler comes back. Josh Richardson is a minor thing from, from one of the peers. So he should be back in the next game. I heard a week at the start of this week. So essentially today it's Thursday. I think that you're going to hear probably by the beginning of next week at the latest that bam out of bios back on the court, you know? So like it's within that week range again, I'm not going to put a game on it or nothing like that, but I think that he, uh, crisis averted on both now, Tyler and bam. I think that they're the, the worst is behind them with those two guys. Hey, would I Smith? It's a little bit more ominous and, and I don't mean ominous in a bad way. And I should probably use a different word. It's a little bit more vague. And I don't know when he's going to be would have been nice to, uh, go into that Monday game against Minnesota at 16 and 10. Um, when you're getting these guys back now, the best thing they can do is 1511. They got to get that one on Friday night because again, Minnesota is no joke this year. And you need bam out there for that front line. Um, and, and then you go to Orlando and you probably need bam out there for that front line. So, uh, it's, it's time to get some guys back and, and hopefully that happens here. And, you know, it would be nice actually to bring bam and Tyler back together and just try to incorporate the whole thing. And you're going to have some stuff to work through, but, but, but that, but that, that to me makes a lot of sense. It also would take some pressure off Tyler. I think, uh, in this situation, but anyway, bad loss tonight, we probably talked too long about it. Uh, check out our sponsors, a aggressive insurance, rock e-sports center and Eric Rubenstein, your personal injury attorney, the Miami heat lose the Chicago bulls are now 14 and 11 on the season. No guts. Someone needs to listen to my dad.