A potentially bonding road trip did not get off to the best of starts for the Miami Heat, who will get a chance to hit the reset button with a visit to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday in Inglewood, Calif.
The Heat opened their five-game West Coast run with a 138-117 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday. Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 30 points with 12 rebounds and seven assists in his seventh game with his new team.
Klay Thompson had 19 points and Bam Adebayo added 16 points with nine rebounds, but the Heat saw the Lakers shoot 57.3% from the floor on 14 more shot attempts than Miami.
Opponents are shredding the Heat defense for 123.9 points per game in the early going, fourth-worst in the NBA. The 48.8% shooting from opponents is third-worst.
“We’re not playing hard enough,” Antetokounmpo said. “We’ve got to play hard, have some pride … and then we’ve got to keep one another accountable and trust one another defensively. Right now we don’t trust one another. We’re not giving that extra effort.”
At 2-5, Miami remains a work in progress.
“A lot of times I feel like when fatigue sets in, we stop communicating, and that’s when mistakes happen,” Adebayo said. “That’s when bad habits set in. … We’ve got to figure it out.”
The Clippers are going through roster upheaval as well, and injuries have only made the cohesion process more difficult. Reinforcements are on the way, though, with Max Strus making his team debut Monday after recovering from a foot injury.
Los Angeles led by double digits into the fourth quarter against the Toronto Raptors on Monday but collapsed late and fell 125-118. After winning their season opener, the Clippers now are on a six-game losing streak.
With forwards Derrick Jones Jr. and Rui Hachimura out, Kobe Sanders delivered a career-high 26 points for Los Angeles. Isaiah Jackson added 19 as he was moved into a reserve role. Strus had 11 points in his debut.
While Darius Garland added 16 points for the Clippers with eight assists, he was 5 of 14 from the floor and had seven of the team’s 15 turnovers.
In the end, the Clippers’ late foul-prone defense led to 47 fourth-quarter points by the Raptors, who received 15 from Scottie Barnes and 14 from Immanuel Quickley in the final period. Toronto went 19 of 26 from the free throw line over the final 12 minutes.
“Find ways to win, find ways to battle, consistently and down the stretch and we’ll get that with this group,” Strus said. “This group is eager to win, eager to learn and they’ve got a lot of guys in here that took another step in the right direction.”
With Strus in the fold, the Clippers hope to have impact options like Brandon Ingram (heel) and young big man Yanic Konan Niederhauser (foot) back soon. Hachimura and Jones are day-to-day, and neither appeared on the injury report Tuesday night.
“We started to get bodies back,” Garland said. “We got a lot of movement on the offensive end. A lot of energy on the defensive end. There were a lot of positives. We just have to finish the game.”
