Dave Hyde: Heat play hard, but can they get a game (or two) off Cavaliers?

Dave Hyde, South Florida Sun-Sentinel on Apr 20, 2025

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You can’t scare them. You can’t break them. You can’t unnerve or unhinge them.

The Miami Heat showed that again on the road Sunday.

You can out-talent them, though.

Cleveland showed that in its 121-100 win in Game 1 of their best-of-seven playoff series.

“Let’s have fun, Spo,’’ Cleveland star Donovan Mitchell said just before tipoff to Heat coach Erik Spoelstra as a TNT microphone relayed.

Fun? Was he kidding? Fun for the Heat was beating ninth-seeded Chicago and eighth-seeded Atlanta in the play-in games, also on the road, to advance to these playoffs.

Fun wasn’t what awaited in the playoffs. Top-seeded Cleveland has three All-Stars, the league’s highest-scoring offense with the top 3-point shooting percentage and the ninth-rated defense. All that matters. What makes it matter even more is Cleveland has the best player in the series in Donovan Mitchell as Sunday confirmed.

Mitchell had 30 points to lead all scorers despite starting 0 for 6 on his 3-pointers. He made up for that by making 9 of 10 of his 2-point shots and two of his final three 3-pointers.

“When he plays like that, we’re nearly unbeatable,’’ Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson said. “In the second half, he was really, really good offensively.”

That’s what the Heat are up against with no equal talent to match. Cleveland is rested, too. So, it was fair to wonder if the Heat would suffer a similar fate as the other game-weary, play-in team, Memphis, in the West. Memphis was trounced by Oklahoma City earlier Sunday, 131-80.

But Memphis is Memphis.

“They make you play for 48 minutes,’’ Atkinson said. “I know that’s a cliché, but a lot of teams don’t.”

“Miami’s not going anywhere,’’ as TNT’s Charles Barkley said.

Still, there’s not going anywhere and not going where you want. The Heat kept it close most of the night. Down eight points at half. Down six points late in the third quarter. They kept flirting with doing more damage like when Bam Adebayo hit a step-back 3-pointer to cut Cleveland’s lead to 95-88 with more than eight minutes left in the game.

“I feel like we had it to seven or eight points several times,’’ Spoelstra said. “Then there’d be a loose ball, an offensive rebound, a kick-out (3-pointer) or they just generated a 3 to keep their distance. We have to be better in those areas, for sure.”

Cleveland’s talent thundered from there, outscoring the Heat 26-12 for the lopsided final. Now there’s two open days until Wednesday for everyone to decide what it means. You don’t need two days of analysis, though.

Cleveland has superior talent. It was the best team in the East this year and the Heat were the 10th-best. It wasn’t just Mitchell It got 27 points from Darius Garland and 28 off the bench from Ty Jerome. All three of them scored more than Adebayo (24) or Tyler Herro (21), the leading scorers for the Heat.

So, something remarkable would have to play out for the Heat to win the series. An injury. A hero. An unbelievable game or two. Something to offset the depth of talent Cleveland puts on the court.

The legitimate question coming out of Game 1 isn’t if the Heat win this series. It’s if they steal a game in Cleveland and put some can spice into this series. It’s if a rookie like Kel’el Ware can process the uptick of emotion in the playoffs so more of the good stuff he showed this season can wash away the two-point, three-rebound performance in Game 1.

“We’re going to learn a lot playing them,’’ Atkinson said.

There is some truth, as Barkley said on TNT, that the Heat’s well-known culture won’t allow Cleveland to overlook this series.

“That’s Erik Spoelstra over there, Bam over there, that’s Tyler Herro,’’ Barkley said. “They can’t screw around with Miami.”

The Heat won’t be intimidated by the moment. That’s a given.

But can they match Cleveland’s talent? That’s what the series rides on and, as Game 1 showed, Cleveland had all the fun for a reason.