At 4-7, Heat searching for answers on both ends of court after last-second loss to Blazers

When Miami Heat forward Max Strus knocked down a contested three-pointer off an inbounds pass from guard Kyle Lowry to tie the score at 107 with 6.2 seconds to play, there wasn’t much time to appreciate the difficulty of the clutch shot.

That’s because the Portland Trail Blazers opted against taking their one remaining timeout. Instead, Trail Blazers forward Justise Winslow quickly threw the inbounds pass to guard Damian Lillard.

“It was like everything stopped,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “I was looking at [Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups], looking at Justise because he had the ball and everybody just stopped. I don’t even think the officials knew what was going on.”

After getting the ball to Lillard, Winslow set a screen in the backcourt to get Heat wing Jimmy Butler off Lillard and Heat forward Duncan Robinson switched onto him. Without much time to waste, Lillard raced down the length of the court to draw multiple Heat defenders once he neared the paint.

“Anybody but [Lillard] in that scenario,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “You see Damian Lillard dribbling it up, you want the ball out of his hands.”

With both Butler and Robinson trailing Lillard, Heat guard Kyle Lowry lifted up from the corner in an effort to slow Lillard as he sprinted toward the basket. But Lowry’s help left Trail Blazers forward Josh Hart open, as Hart caught the pass from Lillard with one second left and hit an open game-winning corner three-pointer in front of the Heat’s bench as the final buzzer sounded.

The Heat, which led by 15 points in the third quarter and by 10 points with 5:50 to play, was outscored 37-26 in Monday’s fourth quarter.

“I understand how [Lillard] drew a couple guys, how he drew Kyle because he might have been able to turn the corner and get one more step into a floater,” Spoelstra said following the Heat’s painful 110-107 loss to the Trail Blazers on Monday night to open a four-game homestand at FTX Arena. “I think that’s what I thought he was going into. Also, you’re thinking he was going to drop his shoulder and try to draw a foul. But he just made a really heady play. He just trusted his teammate and kicked it to an open three.”

Strus added: “I hit the shot and then I saw Chauncey on the floor, so I thought they were calling timeout. I was just kind of stopped and it felt like the longest six seconds possible. But he hit a tough shot. It sucks. But I guess we got to live with it now.”

Crushing last-second losses happen during the course of an 82-game season, but this was especially tough for the Heat to endure because it represented the continuation of its rough start at 4-7 through the first 11 games of the season. Miami had much higher expectations than that for the first three weeks of the schedule after returning 13 players from last season’s team that finished just one win short of reaching the NBA Finals.

“A loss is a loss, honestly,” Lowry said. “Realistically, a loss is a loss. It stings a little bit more because you’re so close. You want to win these games. But we’re 11 games into an 82-game season. So we just got to kind of chip away at it and take it game by game, one by one and get to .500 first and then you just kind of build from there. But we can’t even think about .500. We just got to think about getting the next game.”

The Heat’s next two games come against the struggling Charlotte Hornets (3-8) on Thursday and Saturday at FTX Arena. The Heat was off Tuesday and return to practice Wednesday ahead of two winnable games that it could use to get closer to .500 before starting a difficult 10-game stretch next week that includes eight road games.

“Bigger picture, we just got to take it game by game,” Adebayo said. “We can’t look into the future. Next game up, take it day by day. I feel like if we keep that mindset, we’ll end up on a four-game winning streak, five-game winning streak. So we can’t look too much into the future. We got to take it game by game.”

The Heat has plenty of issues to work out on both ends, entering Tuesday as one of seven NBA teams ranked in the bottom half of the 30-team league in both offense and defense along with the San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, Orlando Magic, Washington Wizards and New York Knicks. Miami holds the 21st-best offensive rating and 17th-best defensive rating.

Three-point shooting was a strength for the Heat last regular season, when it finished as the NBA’s most efficient three-point shooting team (37.9 percent). Miami hasn’t been good in that area to begin this season, entering Tuesday ranked 20th in team three-point percentage at 34.4 percent.

But the Heat’s identity last season was built around its top-five defense. This season, Miami has also been shaky on that end of the court.

“Losing sucks whether it’s by one or 20 or 50 or whatever the case may be,” Heat guard Gabe Vincent said. “So we want to win every game, every possession. Obviously, it’s frustrating. We’re a room full of competitors. We want to win at anything we’re doing, whether it’s a game of UNO or a game of basketball. So we’re going to get our heads together and figure it out.”