With no Jimmy Butler, Heat falls to Raptors in Toronto. Takeaways and details from loss

Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 106-92 loss to the Toronto Raptors (38-38) on Tuesday night at Scotiabank Arena to open a quick two-game trip. The Heat (40-36) is right back at it with another big game on Wednesday against the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden (7:30 p.m., Bally Sports Sun) to close the trip:

With Jimmy Butler unavailable because of neck soreness, the Heat somehow lost to a team that shot just 22.2 percent on threes.

The Raptors shot 8 of 36 from three-point range and was outscored 30-24 from beyond the arc but still won by double digits. That doesn’t happen often in today’s NBA.

In fact, NBA teams entered Tuesday just 38-188 this season when shooting 25 percent or worse from three-point range in a game.

Toronto managed to overcome its three-point shooting struggles by dominating the possession game and the paint.

The Raptors outscored the Heat 62-36 from inside the paint and closed with a big 93-80 edge in field-goal attempts behind 15 offensive rebounds and seven fewer turnovers than Miami.

“We just did not respond well with their energy and a lot of it was just cuts, offensive rebounds, things at the basket,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “They were doing things with great force and we just did not meet them with the necessary force.”

This was the theme of the game from the start, as the Raptors entered halftime with a 53-47 lead despite shooting just 1 of 16 (6.3 percent) from beyond the arc. Toronto did this by totaling 36 paint points on 18-of-29 shooting and taking 10 more field-goal attempts than Miami in the first two quarters.

The Raptors’ lead grew to as many as 19 points in the second half.

The Heat made a late run to cut the deficit to 10 points with 3:25 to play and had possession of the ball to move even closer to the Raptors. But the Heat missed four shots on that possession, which included three offensive rebounds, to waste that opportunity.

The Raptors built on their lead from there on the way to the win.

Three Raptors players finished with more than 20 points.

Pascal Siakam finished with a team-high 26 points to go with nine rebounds and five assists.

Scottie Barnes closed with 22 points and 12 assists.

OG Anunoby contributed 22 points, three rebounds and five assists.

The Heat’s rebounding issues on Tuesday were the continuation of a trend, as it owns the 23rd-ranked defensive rebounding percentage (the percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs) since the All-Star break after entering the break with the fifth-best defensive rebounding percentage.

“I don’t know,” Spoelstra said when asked about the Heat’s recent defensive rebounding issues. “We’ve analyzed everything. We just have to do a better job of it. We work at it, we drill it, we watch film on it, we talk about it. We just have to do it better and that’s the bottom line. It’s costing us opportunities to win. That’s painful enough. We’re capable of doing it. We’re one of the better rebounding teams in the league and we just have to get back to that.”

As for Butler, Tuesday marked the first game that Butler has missed since sitting out a Jan. 24 win over the Boston Celtics because of lower back tightness. He played in 26 straight games during that span after missing 14 of the first 37 games of the season.

The Heat fell to 8-8 in games without Butler this season.

With the Heat playing again on Wednesday against the Knicks, the hope is that Butler will feel healthy enough to play in New York.

The Heat was also without Jamal Cain (G League), Nikola Jovic (back spasms) and Orlando Robinson (G League) against the Raptors.

The Heat is now 8-9 since the All-Star break and has six double-digit losses during that 17-game stretch. Miami had just seven double-digit losses in 59 games before the break.

“We’re going to regroup,” Spoelstra said. “We all feel a certain way about this, but we’re going to regroup. We got 24 hours. We get to play in Madison Square Garden. That’s the only thing right now that we’re thinking about.”

Besides a big scoring night from Tyler Herro, the Heat struggled to generate efficient offense without Butler against the Raptors’ length.

Herro was impressive in the loss, finishing with a game-high 33 points on 13-of-21 shooting from the field and 6-of-10 shooting on threes. He also dished out six assists.

But the rest of the Heat’s roster combined for just 59 points on 19-of-59 (32.3 percent) shooting from the field and 4-of-23 (17.4 percent) shooting on threes. That includes Heat All-Star center Bam Adebayo, who scored 21 points on 7-of-18 shooting from the field and grabbed 12 rebounds.

As a team, the Heat shot just 40 percent from the field and 10 of 33 (30.3 percent) from three-point range and committed 16 turnovers.

“Offensively, we just couldn’t get it going and did not make the right plays consistently enough,” Spoelstra said.

The Heat posted a subpar offensive rating in the loss, scoring 100 points per 100 possessions. Miami is just 1-11 this season when finishing with an offensive rating of 100 points scored per 100 possessions or worse.

Vincent, who played Tuesday through back spasms, scored just two points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field in 18 minutes.

“He was definitely limited,” Spoelstra said of Vincent. “You respect his warrior heart. If we didn’t have other bodies out. Jimmy out, Kyle [Lowry] on a minutes restriction, [Victor Oladipo] not able to play 40 minutes, so he just made himself available. He definitely was limited physically.”

Butler’s absence created a rare opportunity for Oladipo to play as a Heat starter.

Oladipo, who recently fell out of the Heat’s rotation after Lowry’s return from injury, started Tuesday in Butler’s place. It marked Oladipo’s second start of the season, with 37 of his 39 appearances coming off the bench.

Oladipo was relatively quiet with seven points, two rebounds and two assists while shooting 2 of 7 from the field.

This start comes after Oladipo received four DNP-CDs (did not play, coach’s decision) in the previous five games despite being healthy and in uniform. Those were Oladipo’s first four DNP-CDs of the season after spending most of the schedule as a fixture in the Heat’s bench attack.

“It is what it is,” Oladipo said of going from out of the rotation to a starting role on Tuesday. “Just got to continue to just do my best. It’s obviously something that I’m not used to. But I know what it is now and I’m just going to go out there and do my best.”

Oladipo opened Tuesday’s game alongside the rest of the usual starting lineup — Vincent, Herro, Kevin Love and Adebayo — to make up the Heat’s 23rd different starting group of the season. The lineup had not played a single second together this season prior to starting in Toronto.

But this new-look lineup actually helped the Heat start Tuesday’s game strong, opening the night on a 14-10 run before Miami made its substitution of the contest.

It didn’t go as well to begin the second half, as the Heat’s starters were outscored 18-11 before the first substitution was made.

Tuesday’s Heat starting lineup closed the game with a plus/minus of minus-four in 12 minutes together.

While Oladipo moved into the starting lineup, center Cody Zeller was back in the Heat’s bench rotation.

Zeller returned to his role as the Heat’s backup center after missing the previous six games because of a broken nose.

Zeller was solid in his first game action since breaking his nose on March 11, closing Tuesday’s loss with six points and seven rebounds in 11 minutes while wearing a mask to protect his healing face. But like every player in the Heat’s rotation, he finished the defeat with a negative plus/minus.

“I felt fine,” Zeller said after his return. “I did get hit, just on the mask. But it didn’t hurt. It did its job. So it felt good to be back. A little winded that first time around as expected, but it felt good.”

With Zeller back, forward Haywood Highsmith and center Omer Yurtseven were out of the rotation against the Raptors after teaming up to fill in for Zeller while he was out for the last two weeks.

Instead, the Heat’s new normal bench rotation of Zeller, Max Strus, Caleb Martin and Lowry was back intact on Tuesday. Miami emptied its bench in the fourth quarter with Toronto already ahead by double digits.

In his third game back in Toronto since joining the Heat, Lowry finished with six points while shooting 1 of 6 from the field and 0 of 4 on threes. He’s expected to miss Wednesday’s matchup against the Knicks on the second night of the back-to-back as a precaution after recently returning from a knee injury.

The Heat continues to face the very real possibility of having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament.

With Tuesday’s loss, the Heat remains in seventh place in the Eastern Conference.

The No. 7 Heat (40-36) is now one-half game behind the No. 6 Nets (40-35) and three games behind the No. 5 Knicks (43-33).

The Nets also hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Heat after sweeping the regular-season series 3-0.

But the head-to-head tiebreaker between the Heat and Knicks will likely be decided in the teams’ final matchup of the season on Wednesday. A Heat win in that game would tie the season series at 2-2 and the next tiebreaker goes to the division winner that Miami is on track to become and New York is not. A Knicks win would clinch the season series and tiebreaker over the Heat.

The problem is that tiebreaker may not be a factor, as the Heat stands three games behind the Knicks in the loss column with less than two weeks left in the regular season.

The Heat still holds a two-game lead over the eighth-place Atlanta Hawks (38-38) and ninth-place Raptors (38-38).

To escape having to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament, the Heat needs to finish as a top-six playoff seed in the East. The seventh through 10th-place teams in each conference participate in the play-in tournament.

The Heat has six games remaining on its regular-season schedule.