Podcast: Overreactions and lessons learned on the first night of the Miami Heat’s season

The Miami Heat began the 2022-23 NBA season Thursday with a 116-108 loss to the Chicago Bulls and it can only mean one thing.

It’s time to do some overreactions on the Heat Check podcast.

OK, this is only partly true. David Wilson and Anthony Chiang, the Miami Herald’s Heat beat writer, do have some real concerns about the Heat (0-1) after its season-opening loss, but they also know it was only one game of 82 and some of what went wrong should be an outlier for Miami this year.

For example, the Heat isn’t going to commit 19 turnovers per game and star center Bam Adebayo isn’t going to have many 5-of-15 performances. It took an unusually awful performance for Miami to drop its first game of the season at FTX Arena.

At the same time, the Heat shot better than 40 percent from three-point range and this recipe virtually guaranteed victory last season. In Game 1, it wasn’t enough for Miami to overcome its other issues — even with All-Star forward Jimmy Butler, guards Tyler Herro and Max Strus all playing at a high level.

There’s also the Kyle Lowry issue. The point guard, after struggling throughout the 2022 NBA playoffs, got another season off to a rocky start, going just 1 of 7 from the field and 0 for 5 on three-pointers. If this is what the 36-year-old guard is now, then the Heat could be in real trouble, or at least face some tough lineup decisions down the road.

There’s a good chance for a bounce-back performance coming, though: The Boston Celtics come to Miami on Friday for a rematch of the NBA Conference Finals from last season.

As always, thanks for listening and please continue to rate, review and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.