Field Level Media
02 Feb 2023, 08:40 GMT+10
The Miami Heat look to continue their recent good fortune and add to the Knicks' woes Thursday when the Eastern Conference foes meet in New York, their first meeting of the season.
The Heat have won four of their last five games to move into sixth place in the conference, the final guaranteed playoff spot.
In turn, the seventh-place Knicks have lost two in a row and six of their last eight to give the New York tabloids plenty of negative headlines.
Jimmy Butler scored 23 points to fuel Miami in a 100-97 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers on Tuesday.
"We still had lapses, but I'm glad those lapses didn't cost us the game," Butler said. "We got stops down the stretch when we needed to."
Butler did most of his damage at the foul line, sinking 10 of 15 free-throw attempts to offset a 6-for-16 performance from the floor. His off-night from the field came on the heels of a three-game stretch in which he made 26 of 38 attempts.
Bam Adebayo collected 18 points and 11 rebounds for the Heat on Tuesday and Caleb Martin added 18 points and 10 rebounds.
The Heat turned up the temperature on defense against the Cavs. They limited Cleveland to just 27.5 percent shooting from 3-point range (11 of 40), with star Donovan Mitchell making just 3 of his 13 attempts.
"We switched coverages from zone to man to blitzing, throwing different looks at their guards and making them make plays on the fly, which is never easy," Tyler Herro told the Miami Herald.
Herro scored 25 points and Butler added 23 to pace the Heat to a 115-110 victory over the Knicks in their lone meeting in New York last season. RJ Barrett drained six 3-pointers and finished with a career-high 46 points in that game for the Knicks.
Barrett failed to convert from beyond the arc in New York's last contest, however. He went 0-for-3 from 3-point range and 5-for-13 overall from the floor in a 129-123 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday.
The Knicks shot 7-for-34 from beyond the arc as a team against the Lakers. They didn't make a 3-pointer in either the fourth quarter or overtime and saw their season-long percentage from beyond the arc drop to 34.2, which was 25th in the NBA entering Wednesday's play.
"We had good looks, especially in final quarter," Jalen Brunson told the New York Post. "The ball just didn't go in."
Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau saw a bigger problem plaguing his club.
"We're scoring plenty, that's not our issue," he said. "We've got to shore up our defense."
That's true. New York has allowed an average of 121.8 points over its last eight games.
By comparison, it yielded 103.6 points per game over its previous eight contests. The Knicks posted a 7-1 record in that stretch.
--Field Level Media
Get a daily dose of New York Telegraph news through our daily email, its complimentary and keeps you fully up to date with world and business news as well.
Publish news of your business, community or sports group, personnel appointments, major event and more by submitting a news release to New York Telegraph.
More InformationThe U.S. has supplied Israel with scores of BLU-109 bunker-buster bombs since October 7, the Wall Street Journal has reported, ...
WASHINGTON D.C.: This week, the Biden administration announced a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would require U.S. ...
TOKYO, Japan: Japan's space agency recently fell victim to a cyberattack, but reassuringly, the compromised information did not pertain to ...
MOUNT PLEASANT, Michigan: This week, a judge sentenced a Michigan man who kept his dead wife's body in a freezer ...
ATLANTA, Georgia: After two consecutive years of declines mainly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, babies born in the U.S. in ...
The number of soldiers in the Israeli army killed in the current Israel-Hamas war has topped 400. Three hundred and ...
The U.S. has supplied Israel with scores of BLU-109 bunker-buster bombs since October 7, the Wall Street Journal has reported, ...
NEW YORK: A survey by Consumer Reports found that electric vehicles (EV) from 2021 through 2023 model years encountered nearly ...
LONDON, UK: In a report released this week, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said that Singapore and Zurich tied for ...
This campaign explores ice hockey players' influence and popularity beyond their National Hockey League (NHL) careers. The goal was to ...
Washington, DC [US], December 6 (ANI): Amid the indictment of an Indian in an alleged foiled assassination plot in the ...
(Photo credit: Nick Turchiaro-USA TODAY Sports) Matthew Tkachuk is behind schedule. Tkachuk, the Panthers' star winger, will try to add ...