Struggling Heat understands challenge ahead: ‘We’ve got to figure this out very, very quickly’

Just a few days ago, there appeared to be a renewed energy surrounding the Miami Heat following the week-long NBA All-Star break. The Heat had just added veterans Kevin Love and Cody Zeller and there was a feeling of hope that better days were ahead.

But only two games into the Heat’s 23-game post-All-Star break sprint leading into the playoffs, that hope has turned into frustration .

“I’m tired of losing,” forward Jimmy Butler said following the Heat’s 108-103 loss to the rebuilding Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center on Saturday night.

After returning from the All-Star break to practice in Miami on Thursday, the new-look Heat lost by 29 points to the Bucks in Milwaukee on Friday and by five points to the Hornets in Charlotte on Saturday to fall to 32-29 this season. The Bucks loss was ugly because of the margin of defeat and the Hornets loss was bad because it came against the team with the NBA’s fourth-worst record.

Including the Heat’s two straight defeats before the break, Miami is currently on a season-long four-game skid.

“Yes, it’s disappointing. But it’s no time for us to put our heads down and feel sorry for ourselves,” guard Tyler Herro said, as the Heat looks to snap that losing streak when it closes its three-game trip on Monday against the Philadelphia 76ers at Wells Fargo Center (7 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and NBA TV). “This is a point of the year where we can either come together or we can go away and split. I think that’s a big thing is this next game. I feel like going into a hostile environment against a really good team, we’re going to need one another to win that game.”

As the Heat continues to search for solutions, the problem is it has plenty of matchups against good teams coming up. Including this upcoming two-game set against a quality 76ers team that begins Monday in Philadelphia and ends Wednesday in Miami, the Heat’s next seven games come against teams that entered Sunday with a record of .500 or better this season.

The Heat has the eighth-toughest remaining schedule, according to Tankathon.com, based on the current combined winning percentage of teams left to play. The only teams in the East with a more challenging remaining schedule than the Heat are the Toronto Raptors, 76ers and Brooklyn Nets.

“I still feel like we can compete with anybody at any point,” Herro said. “That’s who we are, that’s who we’ve always been since I’ve been here. I don’t think there’s any team in the league at any point at any game any day that we can’t compete with or at least go out there and play. I’m confident that we’ll turn this around.”

For the Heat to turn its season around, it will have to turn its offense around.

The Heat, which entered Sunday with the NBA’s fifth-worst offensive rating this season, holds the third-worst team three-point percentage (33.1 percent) in the league after finishing last regular season as the league’s most efficient three-point shooting team (37.9 percent).

During its current four-game skid, Miami has shot 40 of 139 (28.8 percent) from beyond the arc. That includes an alarming 15 of 59 (25.4 percent) shooting on wide open threes (when the closest defender is six or more feet away), according to NBA tracking stats.

How has the Heat shot this poorly from three-point range in the last four games? Max Strus is 7 of 30 (23.3 percent), Gabe Vincent is 8 of 27 (29.6 percent), Duncan Robinson is 3 of 14 (21.4 percent), Caleb Martin is 4 of 13 (30.8 percent), Love is 3 of 13 (23.1 percent) and Victor Oladipo is 0 of 7 on threes during this stretch.

“First and foremost, we need to hit shots,” Love said when asked about the issues he has noticed in his two games with the Heat. “... We need to make shots, and that’s all of us, all the way around. Keep drilling it, keep getting our shots up, take the ones that are there.”

With the Heat integrating two new faces into the rotation this late in the season, how much of the struggles in the last two games is due to the adjustment process that comes with that for everybody involved? Love and Zeller have gone through one practice with Miami since signing.

“No, that’s not it,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said to quickly dismiss that theory. “We know what our formula is, we know how to win basketball games, we know how to win on the road.”

But with Love starting and Zeller playing as the backup center, both have quickly stepped into important roles within the Heat’s rotation. Not only did it lead to a new Heat starting lineup 60 games into the season, but it has also forced new bench lineups with Zeller playing as a reserve.

“The main thing right now with adding new guys, new pieces and having everybody play their best ball right now at this time of the year is just staying connected,” Martin said. “We just have to stay connected, stat mentally positive and believe in the guys that we got in the locker room, and stuff will turn, man. I don’t think we’re worried about that. It’s about getting on the same page right now.”

As time starts to become a major factor with only 21 regular-season games left to play, there’s still confidence within the Heat’s locker room that the team’s best basketball is ahead.

The Heat will need that to be the case to escape the play-in tournament possibility, as it currently sits in seventh place in the Eastern Conference and is 2.5 games behind the sixth-place New York Knicks. That’s much different than the Heat’s position last season, when it closed as the East’s top playoff seed on the way to the conference finals.

Finishing with a top-six playoff seed is important because it would keep the Heat out of the dreaded play-in tournament. 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 and the chance to face one of the top two teams in the conference in the first round.

The good news for the Heat is it has three matchups against the Knicks remaining on its schedule that it can use to make up ground. But it won’t matter if Miami’s play doesn’t improve.

“I don’t think anybody in here wants to lose,” Butler said as he stood in front of his locker following Saturday’s loss in Charlotte. “We’ve got to figure this out very, very quickly.”