Spoelstra reveals how energy shifted and key player adjustments ignited the Heat's dominant fourth quarter comeback against the Warriors.
The Miami Heat secured their second straight win, a confident 110-96 victory over the Golden State Warriors powered by a 38-point fourth quarter. Coach Erik Spoelstra met with the media afterward in good spirits, breaking down the performance. Here’s everything he said.
On what changed in the fourth quarter to spark the comeback and separation:
“Once Drew threw the ball to me, I think the energy changed. He was a terror after that – he seemed like he was all over the place in our zone: top of the zone, bottom of the zone, wing of the zone. He was making some things happen. That changed the energy of that moment. Everybody else just fed off of that. Norm at the end was really good in the second half. It was frustrating in the first half – he only had three points – but he responded with his voice. He was verbal in every huddle, engaged, figuring out ‘I’ve got to find a different way to make an impact.’ It started with his voice, started with defensive efforts. Then down the stretch he was really good when we put the ball in his hands and ran pick-and-roll basically with him and Bam. He was able to create separation just out of his skill level.”
On Kel’el Ware’s impact off the bench (16 rebounds in 19 minutes):
“Kell was really good tonight. It’s not easy to be starting, playing really well, making an impact as a starter, then come off the bench and still have a big impact in 19 minutes with 16 rebounds – that’s exceptional. It was more about his mindset. They were playing so small because of all the lineups that I was thinking about going bigger, but that could have given them an advantage. That’s something we can definitely build on – the fact that he still had an impact.”
On Bam Adebayo’s return game and how he looked as it went on:
“He just does so many things for a basketball team. Defensively while he was on the floor I bet the numbers were pretty dang good – that’s not a coincidence. Offensively this really fits his strengths. He’s really good at a lot of different things. If you just limit it to one or two things it’s not really fully maximizing his skill set. It was great to have him back for sure.”
On Bam playing 29 minutes in his first game back:
“I never played him extended minutes in a row. He was able to handle it. The work that he did behind the scenes prepared him for this. I wanted to make sure that first number was a two.”
On adjusting to Golden State’s unusual small-ball lineups nobody had really seen before:
“It’s human nature. We jumped out to an early lead and then it probably creeps in like it’s going to be an easy game. You’re looking for a knockout punch early – that’s not the right approach. You want to wear on them. In the second half our efforts were much better. That doesn’t guarantee a 20-point lead, but eventually we wore on them. It’s really one of the first times this season I think we had poor shot selection in the first half. We were playing fast and then it fed into some one-on-fours, some early jacks. We didn’t have our normal paint attacks. That was much better in the second half – even if we weren’t making shots it looked a little more like us.”
On Norman Powell’s 17 fourth-quarter points coming on catch-and-go drives:
“It took us forever to get to that. We were playing fast at the beginning and then doing a lot of poor shot selection, early shots that weren’t getting to our game. We want to get multiple guys in that kind of situation, but it takes intention. You can’t guard Norm when he’s on the move like that, but it takes intention from the other four guys. He’s our leading scorer, so if we’re scoring low in the first half and he has three points there has to be an intuitive feel where we get him in more of those situations without having to make a specific play call like we did in the last three minutes.”
On the process against the Warriors’ zone and overall decision-making:
“We feel a lot more comfortable with it and it’ll continue to get more comfortable. I was more frustrated with some of the decisions in semi-transition or in the half-court against man where we weren’t really getting to the things that have been successful for us. We’re going to see a lot of it and that’s good – we want to see as much of it as we can. Our numbers are solid against zone and it is a compliment, but we want to get to a point where whatever you do it’s a wrong decision.”
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