The Miami Heat managed to scrape by the Detroit Pistons Tuesday night to get their second straight win, marking it 11 victories of the last 14. While some might have concerns that the Heat couldn’t blowout a team like the Pistons who only have nine wins, Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra, star Bam Adebayo, and Caleb Martin spoke about how their record isn’t the whole picture.
Spoelstra after the game started his press conference with the media by giving props to the Pistons and especially their head coach in Monty Williams. He would express that the contest Tuesday was a “physical game and you can’t look at their record.”
“He’s the right guy for this situation and when they start to win and when these guys start to gain experience. He’s an exceptional leader, infuses confidence and positivity in it. He’s a teacher by nature. That was a physical game and you can’t look at their record,” Spoelstra said. “So you try to tell your team that as much as possible and I don’t think our guys were disrespecting them or overlooking them. It’s just the the level of physicality and speed and youthfulness that they bring. You have to experience it, and they’ve been getting better. So I anticipated that it would probably be a pretty physical and competitive game and it was every bit of that.”
Adebayo credits the Pistons and says with time, they can be exciting
Besides Jimmy Butler who led the Heat with 26 points, Adebayo was once again solid as he scored 18 points and collected eight rebounds. He would compliment the youthful Pistons right afterwards as he said to ClutchPoints that they have players “that are really want to go through a brick wall for each other.”
“They are a young team but like we said before, you can’t play their record,” Adebayo said. “They got guys that are really want to go through the brick wall for each other. So you have a core like that and they’re young so they are going to grow into something special. You just got to give it time.”
Spoelstra wants every game to be challenge the Heat
The Heat took a 10-point lead into the second quarter where the Pistons started to find their groove and make it a one-point game at halftime. It came down to the final few possessions until Butler hit a dagger three-point shot to finally put away Detroit in what was another close victory, a type of game that Spoelstra adores.
“If you could just always guarantee that we get the win, I want as many of those as possible,” Spoelstra said. “I love the experiences for our team to be able to go through situational fourth quarter experiences with context of time score, fouls, pressure, you know all that. There’s enough institutional knowledge on what we’re trying to do. So as we’re incorporating some new guys like Terry, I think he can just kind of be himself and he was able to do that down the stretch. These next 21 games, there will probably be a lot of these, it’s just the way it’s going right now, everybody’s fighting for position.”
Caleb Martin says Pistons lack experience despite good play
Caleb Martin as well had a standout game off the bench as he scored 15 points and collected six rebounds. He said to ClutchPoints that the Pistons have been playing in tough outings against good teams in the NBA, but he is certain that experience is what they lack in close contests.
“They’re a big athletic team. They put a lot of pressure on you, they’re a young group, they have a lot to prove and they’re going to come in and play well every night,” Martin said. “They’re playing good basketball and some of that probably I’m sure it has to do with experience down the line towards the fourth but I think overall they have a lot of great pieces and those guys are super, they got a good coach and they got a lot of guys that are super aggressive. They do a lot of great things and like I said earlier I think they made us better tonight. You definitely can’t take the foot off the gas with anybody.”
Miami is now 35-26 on the season which puts them sixth in the tightly packed Eastern Conference. They now head on the road for a brutal back-t0-back against the Dallas Mavericks and the Oklahoma City Thunder starting Thursday.
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