The Miami Heat gather in front of the bench during a timeout in the fourth quarter against the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Arena. David Richard David Richard-Imagn Images
CLEVELAND
The Miami Heat’s margin of error in its first-round playoff series against the talented Cleveland Cavaliers is minuscule. One thing the Heat definitely can’t do is lose in the margins.
But that’s exactly what happened in Game 1, as the Eastern Conference’s eighth-seeded Heat was out-talented and outhustled in a 121-100 blowout loss to the top-seeded Cavaliers on Sunday night at Rocket Arena. The Cavaliers lead the best-of-7 series 1-0.
“We got to be the hardest playing team,” Heat guard Davion Mitchell said, with the series entering a two-day break leading up to Game 2 on Wednesday in Cleveland. “They’re a really good and talented team. They can score the ball with the best of them, so we got to be the hardest playing team. That’s what we got to do.”
The Heat wasn’t that on Sunday, allowing the Cavaliers to come away with nine of the 13 loose balls in Game 1. The Cavaliers also finished with a 14-11 edge in offensive rebounds.
Those advantages paired with 14 Heat turnovers helped the Cavaliers win the possession battle, taking eight more field-goal attempts and four more free throws than Miami.
Considering the Heat finished with the NBA’s ninth-lowest turnover rate (percentage of team’s possessions that end in a turnover) and fourth-highest defensive rebounding percentage (the percentage of available defensive rebounds a team grabs), those are areas that Miami knows it simply can’t lose to Cleveland if it’s going to give itself any chance of making this a long series.
“That was an emphasis coming into tonight — the 50-50s, all the offensive rebounds, just making sure we’re limiting them to one possession,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said following Game 1. “Tonight, obviously, we didn’t do that from the very beginning. They were a lot more physical than us and I think that obviously set the tone.”
The Cavaliers were also just better than the Heat on Sunday, using those extra possessions to fuel their elite offense.
The Cavaliers, which recorded the NBA’s best offensive rating this regular season, totaled 121 points on 51.1% shooting from the field and 18-of-43 (41.9 percent) shooting on threes while committing just eight turnovers in Game 1. The Heat allowed 137.5 points per 100 possessions on Sunday for its worst single-game defensive rating of the season.
“They’re a very good offensive team, as we know,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And then the extra possessions got them some extra life. I feel like we had it to seven points probably five or six times and then inevitably it would be a loose ball that turned out to be an offensive rebound kick-out three or just generate a three to get [the lead] back to double-digits. We’ll have to be better in those areas, for sure. We’ll get to work and see what else we can maximize.
“You’re playing with fire if a team can shoot like that, they can get it going in the paint, can draw fouls and then also get extra possessions and loose balls. That just gives extra life, extra momentum.”
The Heat used its man defense for most of the night, but turned to its zone defense for seven fourth-quarter possessions in the fourth quarter before Cleveland quickly shot Miami out of the zone. The Cavaliers, which took the fourth-most threes per game in the NBA and recorded the league’s second-best team three-point shooting percentage this regular season, shot 7 of 15 on threes Sunday’s fourth quarter to break open Game 1.
“I mean, they’re a historically good offense,” Herro said. “Obviously, they’re No. 1 in the East for a reason. I think we lacked a lot of communication, just mental errors that we can cover up.”
Three Cavaliers players scored more than 25 points on Sunday.
Donovan Mitchell totaled a game-high 30 points on 11-of-19 shooting from the field and 2-of-9 shooting on threes, five rebounds, four assists and four steals.
Ty Jerome added 28 points on 10-of-15 shooting from the field and 5-of-8 shooting on threes in 26 minutes off the bench. He scored 16 points in the fourth quarter.
Darius Garland contributed 27 points on 10-of-17 shooting from the field and 5-of-9 shooting on threes, three rebounds and five assists.
“You get to the playoffs, there are going to be dynamic offensive teams,” Spoelstra said. “And they have guys that drive and break you down off the dribble and they can also just shoot pull-up threes and they’re very good spot-up shooters, as well. So that’s the task and it’s up to us to figure out how to beat that.”
The Heat’s offense also struggled at times, even as it shot an efficient 13 of 31 (41.9%) from three-point range in Game 1. Miami totaled just 21 points in the fourth quarter.
In addition, the Heat generated only five shot attempts from within the restricted area against the Cavaliers’ lengthy frontcourt anchored by NBA Defensive Player of the Year finalist Evan Mobley.
“We’ll have to figure it out,” Spoelstra said. “We’ve really improved offensively. But they did force us into some tough possessions and possessions where we didn’t really work it the way we have to.. We’ll get to the film and figure out where we need to be better.”
The Heat’s leading duo of Bam Adebayo (24 points) and Herro (21 points) combined for 45 points on 40 field-goal attempts. But after scoring 19 points on 16 shots over the first three quarters, Herro was limited to just two points on two shots in Sunday’s fourth quarter.
“I just got to continue to be aggressive in finding my shots,” Herro said. “Obviously, they’re denying me and picking me up full court and just trying to make things tough. But we’ve faced that literally all year. I just got to be better.”
That was the theme during Heat interviews following Game 1. The Heat knows it must be a lot better to make this a competitive series.
“Be disruptive, stop overthinking, do what we’ve been doing all year,” Mitchell said. “No matter how good they are, we can be disruptive. They’re humans just like us, so we just got to be able to make plays. I think if our mindset is to make plays on the defensive end, we’ll do it.”
Miami is already facing an uphill battle, as the first-place Cavaliers finished 27 games ahead of the 10th-place Heat in the East standings this regular season.
But the Heat will be facing an uphill battle that few teams have overcome if it loses Wednesday’s Game 2 in Cleveland. Entering this year’s playoffs, teams that drop the first two games of a best-of-7 series have gone on to lose the series 92 percent (28-323) of the time.
To avoid a 2-0 hole, the Heat must first make sure that the Cavaliers aren’t hardest playing team on Wednesday. Heat coaches and players know that, hoping to use this two-day break between Games 1 and 2 to make sure it doesn’t get out-hustled again.
The Heat’s margin of error is just too small in this series to lose the battle in the margins.
“The physicality and just getting those 50-50 balls,” Heat forward Andrew Wiggins said of what went wrong in Game 1. “Offensive rebounds. Just little stuff that we can clean up. The beautiful thing about the playoffs is every game is different. Every game is its own game. So, next game will be a big one.”
This story was originally published April 21, 2025 at 11:53 AM.
