NEW YORK — Between his two NBA titles, his two additional trips to the Finals, after the Miami Heat‘s Big Three Era, and his selection as one of the league’s 15 Greatest Coaches back in 2022, Erik Spoelstra’s reputation is unimpeachable.
But things have been incredibly rough for Spoelstra and the Heat as of late. And on Monday, when Miami lost, 116-95, to the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, it marked an eighth-consecutive loss for the club — the Heat’s longest skid in Spoelstra’s 17-year head-coaching career.
Asked if he was concerned about players potentially letting go of the rope, Spoelstra said, yes. “Of course. We’re all getting tested, including myself. No one’s absolved from this. I’ve not come up with enough answers for this team. I have to do a better job. Our group has to do a better job.
“We have to put our feet into the dirt and hold our ground at this point. You always have a choice. It doesn’t mean you’re going to win, necessarily. … But [you at least have] to make some strides. And you could see that in some of the losses over the last three weeks, where it felt like we were making strides. The last two games haven’t felt like that.”
It’s been a strange, frustrating year for the club, which has a long history of playing gritty, hard-nosed basketball. The franchise endured a high-profile standoff with former star player Jimmy Butler, who was suspended a number of times after demanding a trade. Team president Pat Riley eventually swung a deal ahead of the deadline to send Butler to the Golden State Warriors.
But the teams have been on completely different trajectories since then, with the Heat logging a 4-15 mark from that point, while the Warriors have gone 14-2 since acquiring Butler. The Heat, held beneath the 100-point mark for three consecutive games for the first time since 2018, have logged the NBA’s least-efficient offense in the month of March. And the team — at the back end of the East’s play-in picture — now finds itself 10 games below .500 for the first time since 2017.
“We’re going through the dark days right now,” forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said after the loss. “As a team, right now we’ve got to come together and find a way to fight. It’s something we’ve been talking about. We just need to find something to rally around.”
Miami (29-39) looked fine to start on Monday, jumping out to a quick 12-0 advantage over the first four minutes of play. But things turned quickly in the second period, when All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns reeled off 15 consecutive points in just over three minutes of play to narrowly push the Knicks ahead for the first time.
The wheels came all the way off in the third, when New York outscored Miami 41-15, though the game was paused for about 10 minutes or so when actor and comedian Tracy Morgan, a Knicks fan who often sits courtside at the Garden, appeared to vomit onto the floor and required medical attention. He was taken off the court in a wheelchair.
A MSG spokesperson issued a brief statement saying that “we hope Tracy feels better soon and look forward to seeing him back courtside.”
As for the Heat, who are desperately seeking to turn things around, they now have five straight games at home to try and do so. Spoelstra acknowledged that it will be a test for his club to mentally wipe its mind of these past three weeks in an effort to push forward.
“This has been one of the biggest challenges that I’ve ever come up against in a regular season. But we just have to stay the course,” Spoelstra said. “We’ll have another game Wednesday night, and we have to collectively get our mind right. All these losses don’t have to necessarily impact the next game. That’s the mental discipline [we need], and it’s a tough human condition to fight, because it’s human nature to stack up some of these memories and let them affect us for the next game.”
ESPN Senior NBA Writer Tim Bontemps contributed to this report.
