Heat falls to 0-2 on important homestand with painful loss to Knicks. Takeaways and reaction

As if suffering back-to-back losses to open the most important homestand of its season wasn’t bad enough, “Let’s Go Knicks” chants filled the Miami Heat’s home arena at one point during its latest defeat.

The Heat put together an inspiring second-half comeback but fell just short in a painful 122-120 loss to the streaking New York Knicks on Friday night at Miami-Dade Arena.

“It’s just a shame,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We made a lot of really inspiring defensive plays down the stretch.”

After guard Tyler Herro stole the ball and turned the turnover into a layup to give the Heat a one-point lead with 23.1 seconds to play, forward Julius Randle hit a contested game-winning three-pointer over Herro on the other end with 1.7 seconds left to lift the Knicks to the dramatic win.

“That’s just crazy unfortunate luck on our part and good fortune for them. He made a heck of a shot,” Spoelstra said of Randle’s game-winner. “I thought Tyler really made the smart play of rotating just to have another body there. But still that’s not an easy shot to capitalize on that.”

Heat star Jimmy Butler poked the ball away from Randle twice in the final seconds, but Randle regained possession each time before hitting the tough game-winning three.

“That’s just the karma of the game when he’s having a night like he was having,” Butler said. “You knock the ball loose, somehow someway it ends up in his shooting pocket and he turns and shoots it.”

Randle led the Knicks with 43 points on 16-of-25 shooting from the field and 8-of-13 shooting on threes. His eight made threes tied a career-high.

The Heat (33-31) is now 0-2 on its six-game homestand, 1-4 since the All-Star break and 1-6 in its last seven games as it continues to face the very real possibility of having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament. Meanwhile, the Knicks have won eight straight games.

The Knicks (38-27) dominated the first half, opening the game by scoring 37 points in the first quarter and 34 points in the second quarter to enter halftime ahead by 15 behind 25 first-half points from Randle.

The Heat showed signs of life in the third quarter, cutting the deficit to three points with 2:22 left in the period. But the Knicks closed the quarter on a 5-0 run to enter the fourth ahead by eight points.

The Heat kept coming, though, opening the final quarter on a 19-10 run to pull ahead by one point with 5:45 to play. It marked Miami’s first lead since the opening quarter.

But the painful sequence in the final seconds that ended with Randle’s game-winner erased the Heat’s hopes of completing the comeback.

Butler delivered an excellent performance for the Heat in the loss with 33 points behind 18-of-20 shooting from the foul line.

Herro scored 29 points on 11-of-18 shooting from the field and 5-of-8 shooting on threes. He scored 17 points in the second half.

Heat center Bam Adebayo finished with 18 points on 7-of-16 shooting from the field, four rebounds and four assists.

With Adebayo, Butler and Herro combining for 80 points, the rest of the Heat’s roster combined for 40 points on Friday.

“We didn’t deserve to win, we did not and they got one,” a frustrated Butler said.

The Heat continues its important homestand on Saturday at 8 p.m. against the Atlanta Hawks — another team it’s battling with for playoff positioning — to complete the back-to-back set.

Five takeaways from the Heat’s loss to the Knicks on Friday:

The Heat’s frustrating season filled of inconsistent play continued.

The Heat’s defense in the first half was awful, as the Knicks totaled 71 first-half points on 63.4 percent shooting from the field and 10-of-22 (45.5 percent) shooting on threes. Those 71 points are tied for the second-most points the Heat has allowed in any half this season.

The Knicks also scored 17 of their 23 fast-break points in the first half.

The Heat allowed 144.9 points per 100 possessions in the first two quarters, which is the fifth-worst defensive rating it has posted in any half this season.

The result was a 15-point halftime deficit for the Heat.

Miami’s effort and disposition on that end of the court was different in the second half, allowing just 110.9 points per 100 possessions in the final two quarters even while New York continued to hit a bunch of tough shots. The Knicks scored 51 points on 52.5 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-19 (36.8 percent) shooting on threes after halftime.

The Heat did it without fouling, too, limiting the Knicks to just three free throws in the second half after they attempted 14 throws in the first half.

That defensive effort down the stretch paired with a 64-point second half on 58.3 percent shooting from the field and 7-of-11 (63.6 percent) shooting from beyond the arc brought the Heat all the way back.

“In the first half, we were just lethargic and slow,” Adebayo said. “We weren’t really committed to guarding the ball. In the second half, it was a whole different ball game.”

Just how inconsistent was Miami on Friday? The Heat’s first-half defensive rating would rank last and its second-half defensive rating would rank fourth-best among the NBA’s overall rankings for the season.

“I’m at a point now, I think everybody is, it doesn’t surprise us,” Butler said after Friday’s loss when asked about the Heat’s inconsistent play. “We really get bored with the process and I can’t tell you why. We play hard and sometimes we get back in the game like we did tonight and sometimes we don’t.

“But either way it goes, if we just play basketball the right way the entire game, I don’t think we’re in this situation more often than not. But for some odd reason, we think it’s going to be easy so we just go out there and go through the motions.”

Miami fell just short of overcoming its sloppy start.

“We walked into the locker room after the game and Jimmy just said, ‘The way we played in the second half, that’s how we’re supposed to play,’” Herro said. “But we can’t wait, especially at this point in the year and against the teams that we’re playing. We can’t wait. There’s no more waiting.”

Butler put together one his best games of the season in the loss.

Even during the Heat’s rough first half, Butler kept the game from getting completely out of hand with 19 points on 3-of-8 shooting from the field and 12-of-13 shooting from the foul line in 14 minutes.

Then in the second half, Butler totaled 14 points 4-of-7 shooting from the field and 6-of-7 shooting from the foul line in 19 minutes.

Butler ended the night 18 of 20 from the foul line. It marked the third time this season and the 11th time in his NBA career that he has finished a game with 20 or more free-throw attempts.

The Heat outscored the Knicks by 18 points in Butler’s 33 minutes. The problem is the Heat was outscored by 20 points in the 15 minutes Butler spent on the bench.

“Jimmy was just outstanding tonight,” Spoelstra said. “That’s just incredible exquisite winning basketball. Taking on all the biggest challenges defensively and then really assertive offensively.”

The question now is: Will Butler play Saturday on the second night of the back-to-back?

Butler, 33, played Friday despite being listed as questionable because of right knee soreness. Butler has played in just four of the Heat’s nine back-to-backs so far this season.

“Man, I don’t even know if I’m going to wake up in the morning,” Butler said when asked if he’ll play on Saturday. “That’s the way the world works.”

Despite the lineup’s recent issues, the Heat opened with the same starting lineup for the fifth straight game.

The Heat again went with the starting lineup of Gabe Vincent, Herro, Butler, Kevin Love and Adebayo.

The group posted a positive-plus minus for the first time in its fifth game together, as the Heat outscored the Knicks by three points in that lineup’s 14 minutes together on Friday.

This comes after the Heat’s new starting lineup was outscored by total of 22 points in 59 minutes in its first four games together, which was alarming considering the starting group was one of the team’s few consistent positives this season before Spoelstra changed things up coming out of the All-Star break.

Love closed his fifth game in a Heat uniform with nine points and eight rebounds in 23 minutes. His only playing time in the fourth quarter came in the final 1.1 seconds of the period to throw the inbounds pass on Miami’s final offensive possession.

Lowry, who remains out indefinitely for the Heat, has already been ruled out for Saturday’s home game against the Hawks on the second night of the back-to-back.

Spoelstra confirmed prior to Friday’s game that Lowry will miss his 12th straight game on Saturday because of left knee soreness. Lowry’s last played in a Feb. 2 loss to the Knicks in New York.

This comes after Lowry was upgraded to questionable for Monday’s matchup against the 76ers in Philadelphia. But the team and Lowry decided that he was not quite yet ready to play and there’s currently no definitive timetable for his return.

Lowry, who is in the second year of his three-year, $85 million contract, watched Friday’s loss from the Heat’s bench.

The Heat was also without Jamal Cain (G League, two way contract), Nikola Jovic (lower back stress reaction) and Omer Yurtseven (G League assignment) against the Knicks.

Yurtseven made his season debut with the Heat’s G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce, on Friday to take the next step in the recovery process from November surgery on his left ankle. He finished with 27 points, 10 rebounds and five assists for the Skyforce.

This was a very bad night for the Heat in the Eastern Conference playoff race.

The two teams in front of the seventh-place Heat — the fifth-place Knicks and the sixth-place Brooklyn Nets — both won on Friday And the team immediately behind the Heat — the eighth-place Hawks — also won on Friday.

Even the ninth-place Toronto Raptors and 10th-place Washington Wizards were able to gain ground on the Heat on Friday since they were both idle.

With 18 regular-season games left to the play, the seventh-place Heat fell 2.5 games behind the sixth-place Nets and 4.5 games behind the fifth-place Knicks in the East standings. The Heat is also just one-half game ahead of the eighth-place Hawks and two games ahead of the ninth-place Raptors and 10th-place Wizards.

Finishing with a top-six playoff seed is important because it would keep the Heat out of the dreaded play-in tournament, but avoiding that path became even tougher after Friday’s results.

The play-in tournament, which is done during the week-long window between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, features the seventh through 10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference.