MIAMI — The Heat had won six straight. The Nets had beaten Miami five in a row. Somebody as going to lose their streak, and in the end it was Brooklyn.
The Nets gave away the lead with a drought in the second quarter, and saw Jimmy Butler take their spirit in the third. And when it was over, the Nets had a 122-115 loss before 19,866 at Kaseya Center on Thursday night.
“They went on a run. The game is all about runs. They punched us in the face,” said Lonnie Walker IV, who had 23 points off the bench for the Nets.
“Played the right way, a couple of shots wasn’t really falling. And overall, Jimmy Butler pretty much took over the game. There’s a point of time where he probably scored 10 straight, 12 straight. Just making the right reads, doing the right plays and just came out and played pretty hard.”
That punch was a 14-0 run to close the half, turning a six-point Nets lead into an eight-point deficit.
Then Butler poured in 18 of his game-high 36 points in the third quarter. It was the highest-scoring period of his Heat career.
“Their run going into halftime, it put it to eight or something like that,” head coach Jacque Vaughn said. “You can’t have that momentum shift going into halftime; so that’s something that we need to learn about, finishing the half, having the momentum going in your favor into halftime.
“Then we came out and we were just trying to counterpunch, you give them credit. Bam [Adebayo] was extremely good at causing us to collapse our defense … and then [Butler] was playing at another level. His ability to score on different guys, we tried to throw different things at him. So we never were able to get over the hump.”
The Nets (6-6) never mounted a challenge from there against a Miami team they had beaten five straight times entering the night.
“I think it was a little too late when we started trying to go double [-team Butler]. But yeah, I mean, that’s what he does, you know, especially when you get it going,” said Mikal Bridges, who had 23 points, seven rebounds and five assists. “They got shooters and they cut and move well, so it was just picking us apart, you know, overwhelming a little bit.”
The Nets had been the last team to beat the Heat, rallying from 16 points down minus three starters on Nov. 1. They actually came in having beaten Miami in five straight games stretching back to March 26, 2022, matching their longest-ever run against the Heat (8-4).
That had been the longest active win streak for any team against the Heat, but it came to an end Thursday. Miami has now won a league-high seven straight.
Playing without injured point guard Ben Simmons and leading scorer Cam Thomas, Vaughn has been begging and pleading for the Nets to force more turnovers so they could get out in transition. It didn’t happen, creating just nine — four in the first half when Miami got entirely too comfortable in its sets.
Nic Claxon (16 points, three blocks) converted an alley-oop and-one from Spencer Dinwiddie to put the Nets ahead 52-46 with 4:13 left in the first half.
But they shot 0-for-7 with three turnovers the rest of the way, watching a six-point cushion devolve into an eight-point deficit. By the time Royce O’Neale lackadaisically came toward a Dinwiddie pass and turned it over to Butler — who fed Haywood Highsmith for a fast-break layup — the Nets were in a 60-52 hole.
They fell behind by 13 in the third quarter, with Butler’s free throws making it 92-79 with 52.8 seconds left. The deficit swelled to 17 in the fourth.
“[Butler] was locked in, to say the least. He had a couple of steals, you know really, really pre-rotating on us as well, understanding when we were going to pass it and just being very aggressive,” Walker said.
“I think the Heat team was very aggressive on defense, being up under us to make us uncomfortable, speeding us up. You know, but it was just one of those games; sometimes the ball doesn’t go inside the hoop. We got to find ways to continuously attack, be aggressive, and keep going.”
Bridges will have his jersey retired by Villanova on Friday night when the Wildcats host Maryland.