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Davion Mitchell's three-pointer with 8.1 seconds left cut Charlotte's lead to 113-110, and for a moment there, it felt like Miami could possibly steal one. Then Grayson Allen, who had just made a momentum-changing 4 point play, made another two free throws.

The Hornets won 115-110, and the Heat left Charlotte 0-3. Miami has trailed by double digits in all three games. It has given up 131, 128 and 115 points. Anthony Edwards put up 45 on opening night while Minnesota won the rebounding battle 52-34. Two nights later John Collins went 5-of-6 from three in a 17-point Detroit win.

And Saturday night, the Heat fell behind by 23 to a Charlotte team playing without Kon Knueppel, Coby White and Grant Williams, on the second night of a back-to-back, less than 24 hours after losing its home opener to Atlanta by 47.

Miami did not trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo to end up in a rock fight with that team.

Everybody knew this roster would need time. Giannis, Bobby Portis Jr, Klay Thompson and Tim Hardaway Jr. are all new, and there are several others in the rotation behind them that are also new and have barely played together.

What surprises me is how scattered the defense has looked, because the defense was supposed to work from day one. Giannis and Bam Adebayo were supposed to set a floor under this team. Right now though, Miami is giving up close to 125 a night. So yes, there's some figuring out to do. But I've also seen the reaction online over the last 72 hours, and some of it has gotten silly. The experiment failed. Trouble in paradise for Giannis. Time to panic.

That's how we watch sports now. We have become such an opinionated culture that doesn’t allow someone’s story finish anymore before we make our own conclusions. Lose a close game and you choked. Miss one free throw in the fourth quarter and you were never built for the moment. Make one mistake in a big spot and you don't have what it takes to be a champion.

We grade a season off three games, a player off one possession, a coach off one timeout, and then we're on to the next verdict. Giannis should know better than anybody. For years he was the guy who couldn't win the big one, right up until he won it in 2021.

Three games isn't a large enough sample. It's 3.7 percent of the schedule, and good teams have survived much worse than this.

In November 2010, the Big Three Heat lost at Dallas to fall to 9-8. They'd dropped four of five. The players held a closed-door meeting about communication. People seriously asked whether Erik Spoelstra would be fired and Pat Riley would come back down to coach, and the LeBron James bump during a timeout got treated like the beginning of the end. That team won 58 games, finished second in the East and played in the Finals.

In January 2015, LeBron's first season back in Cleveland, the Cavaliers lost 10 of 12 and fell to 19-20. Kevin Love didn't fit, the roster was off, and the talk was that the reunion had already gone wrong. They finished 53-29, swept Atlanta in the conference finals and played in the Finals.

On January 6, 2022, the Celtics were 18-21. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown supposedly couldn't play together, and Ime Udoka's first season was being called a mistake. Boston finished 51-31 with the best defense in the league and played in the Finals.

All three of these teams finished as the second seed but none of them looked like they would become that in those difficult moments.

The team that I keep coming back to is the 2017-18 Sixers, because they started exactly like this.

Philadelphia lost its first three games. It was 1-4 after five and 15-19 after a loss in Portland at the end of December. And that roster looked a little like this one: two stars whose games overlapped in Joel Embiid and a rookie Ben Simmons, a lack of spacing that many were questioning at the time, and a veteran movement shooter in JJ Redick who was brought in to make the spacing work. It took them half a season to figure out who they were. Then they won their last 16 games, finished 52-30 and took the third seed.

Fifty-two wins and the 3 seed after an 0-3 start. That's almost exactly where I picked this Heat team to finish before the season. And the team Philadelphia beat 4-1 in the first round that spring was Miami.

The East is deep, and an 0-3 hole can quickly turn into a 5-12 hole. Philadelphia needed a 16-game win streak to get where it got. Bad starts don't always turn around. Plenty of teams that start this way just stay bad. But the specific way Miami has been bad points to something fixable.

It's defense, and early-season defense with new personnel is mostly communication. Switches that come a step late. Help that arrives from the wrong side. Rotations that a group with two years together that are on a string, runs on instinct. But a group with three weeks together has to think about. That's the part of the game that improves with reps more than any other.

Although this team is too talented for moral victories, there was also something encouraging in the loss to Charlotte. Down 23, Miami went on a 25-4 run and tied it at 100 with under six minutes to go. Mitchell, Bobby Portis and Pelle Larsson drove it. Mitchell finished with 22 points and 10 assists and scored the last five of the rally himself. Larsson played through a finger sprain and scored 15. Portis gave them 13. It wasn't pretty, but it was the most Miami Heat stretch of the season so far where guys were guarding, crashing, and refusing to let it end quietly.

That tells you the passion and effort is there. What's missing is the structure and continuity, which is the easier fix.

So let’s pump the brakes. Sure, Miami has some real problems that they have to solve. But it's October, and there’s still a long way to go.


This article first appeared on Miami Heat on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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