Heat coach reveals defensive lapses and offensive struggles cost Miami, forcing a second-half uphill battle.
On the explanation from officials about the five-second call:
"Yeah, they said it was 5 seconds. I haven't gone through the mechanics of it right now, but it felt like a quick five. If that was a five, then I felt like we had a 5-second one where they had the third option went to Banchero over the top. That felt very similar. But nevertheless, we put ourselves in that situation."
On the defensive performance in the second half:
"Defensively in the second half we just made much more of a stand. Held them to 37% and 50 points. It was much different than the first half where we were just getting attacked off the dribble, a lot of them in one-on-one situations and in a bunch of different ways. Then the cuts, then the transition. We just did not set the tone for the game defensively and then the rest of the second half we had to dig from behind. We don't want to get in the habit of allowing teams to put up 70 on us in a half without resistance."
On Norman Powell coming off the bench after his groin injury and the decision-making around his minutes:
"Yeah. And also to try to manage it. He'll be fine as long as we're responsible about it. Look, these are not easy decisions. Right now he's going to play a lot of minutes. Tyler's going to play a lot of minutes. Right now, we just need to focus on winning games and pouring into the team. We want to be healthy. We want our guys out there. We want our firepower. We want our options. With that comes some level of sacrifice. What we'll do each game, I don't know. At this point, we're just doing whatever we feel is necessary to put ourselves in a position to win. But it looks like everybody came out of the game good. So that's a positive step."
On the lower shot quality in the half court and whether it was due to their defense or the opponent's:
"A little bit of both. They're big. They're able to contain some of our drives and stay at home. But again, the offense looked a little bit different in the second half when you're getting a few more stops and you're playing in a little bit more pace. So all of that works together. In the second half, I thought we had some good looks at three that we missed—some of those could change how things look and feel. The first half, it was tough to judge. We were really kind of out of sorts giving up that many points and then we had some turnovers. So it was a little bit of everything, but you definitely have to credit their defense. They've been playing at a high level defensively for a few weeks and they certainly did that to us for sure in the first half."
On what he liked about the team's performance despite the loss, especially in the second half, and the positives to take away:
"What I mentioned, we're not looking for moral victories, but we can't get it twisted—for us, what sets the tone for games, we have to be mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually ready to defend. I love that our guys feel great about our offense. You want to have that confidence, but you're going to have games like this where you're just not going to be able to put 150 on the board. Whichever team can really set the tenor and tone of a game defensively probably has the best chance of controlling the game. For large parts of the game they controlled the game defensively. Second half was better for us—like I said, being able to hold them under 40% and 50 points. Just some version of that in the first half and we're probably in great shape."
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