Five takeaways from the Heat’s embarrassing 135-118 loss at Indiana on Sunday evening:
▪ The Heat suffered the indignity of losing to the league’s worst team for the second time in 2 ½ months. What’s more, Miami finished 2-3 against the two teams that began Sunday in the basement of each conference (Indiana and Sacramento).
Miami, which lost for the seventh time in eight games, again was slow and passive and inattentive defensively, permitting the Pacers to shoot 58 percent overall and 46 percent (18 for 39) on threes.
The Heat repeatedly allowed open shots and unchallenged forays to the basket in another demoralizing and disgraceful defensive display, one made all the worse by the fact the Heat is fighting for playoff seeding.
Miami fell to 10th in the East, pending the outcome of Charlotte’s game against Boston. “We can’t give up on the season,” Tyler Herro said.
Herro kept the Heat afloat for awhile, scoring 23 in the first half and 31 through three quarters. But Herro missed his only three shots in a scoreless fourth quarter, finishing 12 of 22 from the field.
Two nights after yielding a franchise-record 81 points in a first half against Cleveland, Miami permitted 79 in the first half against a Pacers team that had lost 18 of its last 19 and was missing two of its three best players (Tyrese Haliburton and Ivaca Zubak).
“Two very disappointing losses,” Erik Spoelstra said of the defensive debacles against Cleveland and Indiana over the past three days. “I know our guys really want this. I know these last two games it doesn’t appear that way. We can’t explain it right now.”
Indy scored 45 in the second quarter to go ahead by four at the break, led 108-107 after three and pushed the margin to 13 with three minutes left.
The Heat went cold in the fourth, making just five of 25 shots. Miami was outscored, 27-11, in the fourth and missed all seven of its three-point attempts in the quarter.
“We just missed a lot of shots,” Spoelstra said. “There were a lot of good looks we will take.”
Jaime Jaquez Jr. offered what he could, scoring 17 points and in the process joining Dwayne Wade, Herro and Tyler Johnson as the only Heat players to score 1000 points off the bench in a season.
Pelle Larsson added 15. Bam Adebayo had 15 points and 12 rebounds, but Miami was outscored by nine in his 33 minutes.
▪ The defense remains a disaster.
In Friday’s 149-128 loss to Cleveland, Miami allowed the most points it has ever relinquished in a non-overtime game. And yet the first half Sunday felt worse, because of the appalling volume of wide open Pacers three-pointers and the poor quality of the injury-riddled opponent.
Indiana shot 68 percent in the first half (30 for 44) and 59 percent on threes (13 for 22). They were consistently a step ahead of the Heat’s defense, and not only from the three-point line.
There was one instance where journeyman Micah Potter faked out Kel’el Ware and drove for a thunderous dunk. Moments later, TJ McConnell faked out Jaquez for a layup.
There was Kobe Brown driving for an uncontested dunk over here, Quenton Jackson breaking down the Heat’s defense over there and Obi Toppin finding gaps in the Heat defense everywhere.
The Heat’s zone worked on several second-half possessions, but Miami still allowed too many open threes — and had too many defensive breakdowns — when the game was decided in the fourth quarter.
“We’ve got to communicate more on the defensive end,” Adebayo said. “A lot of the first half was us not communicating so they get open threes. Things like that, we’ve got to clean up.”
With the Heat continuing to play small, Siakam was able to shoot over smaller defenders, including an easy jumper over Davion Mitchell, who’s eight inches shorter at an even six feet. Potter, 6-9, also seized on mismatches.
The Heat (39-36) statistically has had the NBA’s worst defense over the past two weeks among franchises that aren’t trying to lose games to achieve better draft position.
Miami entered having allowed 133 points per game in its past six losses, prompting Spoelstra to say Friday night that the team’s defense had “disappeared.”
That defense entered the second week of March ranked fourth in the league but remained on a milk carton Sunday. While a few of the Pacers’ 18 made threes were tightly contested, many were not.
Indiana’s 13 threes in the first half against the Heat were its most in a half this season.
Spoelstra said no need for major schematic or major strategic changes defensively: “We’ve had way more games of [good] habits doing it several months. Sometimes that just happens over the course of a long season. It’s happening at the wrong time for us but we’re not going to reinvent the wheel. We have several different kinds of schemes and adjustments we can get to and we’ve cycled through everything in these games. We just need to show that toughness.”
Potter, who began his career playing for the Heat’s Summer League team as an undrafted player out of Wisconsin in 2021, scored 19 in the first half (on 5 for 6 three-point shooting) and 21 for the game.
Siakam scored 17 in the first half and closed with 30 points and 11 rebounds. Brown scored 18, easily exceeding his 3.1 career scoring average. McConnell had 15 points and 9 assists.
“We know what to do [defensively],” Herro said. “We’ve had a great defense most of the season.”
▪ The Heat’s new lineup lasted only two games because of injury.
Initially listed as questionable for the game with back spasms, Norman Powell on Sunday morning was downgraded to out because of an upper respiratory illness. It was the 20th missed game for Powell and ninth absence in Miami’s past 15.
During this 15-game stretch, Powell was held out of seven straight games due to a right groin strain and also missed one game with left calf tightness.
An impending unrestricted free agent, Powell has shot just 32 percent on threes since the All Star break after shooting 39.6 before the break and earning his first career All Star game appearance.
When the Heat plays Herro and Powell together, Miami has been outscored by 26 points in 249 minutes this season.
The Heat had gone 1-1 this past week (and 4-4 overall this season) with Powell starting alongside Herro, Mitchell, Adebayo and Andrew Wiggins. That quintet has appeared in only 10 games overall together, outscoring teams by 12 points in their 126 minutes of cumulative court time.
With Powell out, Spoelstra inserted Larsson in his starting group, giving the second-year Swede his 49th start this season. That starting group is now 3-4 this season.
The Heat remained without two-way contract players Vlad Goldin, Trevor Keels and Jahmir Young. All are expected to join the Heat this week because the Heat’s G-League team, the Sioux Falls Skyforce, concluded its season on Saturday.
▪ The Heat lost for the seventh time (versus 17 wins) against the non-playoff and non play-in teams.
Of those seven losses, setbacks against Dallas and Indiana (while both were still trying to win) and Milwaukee could at least be rationalized.
But there were four inexcusable losses: Sunday’s stinker at Indy, at home to a tanking Utah team, and a 17-point loss to the Kings (who have the worst record in the Western Conference) and the January 24-point loss at Indiana, after which Mitchell admitted the Heat didn’t take the game seriously enough.
On Sunday night, Mitchell said in the case of this loss to the Pacers, “I honestly don’t think we took them lightly. They were just hitting a lot of shots. We gave them confidence at the beginning.”
The Heat essentially needed to sweep the league’s tankers this season because of its poor 22-29 record against teams with top 10 seeds.
The Heat at times looked like a juggernaut against tankers this season, topping 140 points in four of those games and reaching 150 in Adebayo’s 83-point game against Washington. But the four losses to egregious tankers were inexcusable. Not surprisingly, the Heat hasn’t come close to replicating that kind of success against franchises that are actually trying to win.
▪ And now arrives one of the most important games of the year.
Any chance of Miami jumping No. 7 Philadelphia in the standings realistically would hinge on Miami beating the 76ers at Kaseya Center at 7 p.m. Monday (Peacock, NBC-SN). The teams split two previous meetings, so the winner Monday wins the tiebreaker if the teams finished tie.
The 76ers, who lead the Heat by 2 1/2 games, are now fully healthy, and especially dangerous, after the return of Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey from injuries and Paul George from a 25-game NBA suspension.
“We’re disappointed, we’re upset, we’re angry,” Spoelstra said. “We need to use it as fuel and bring a great game [Monday].”
If the Heat loses to Philadelphia on Monday and at home to Boston on Wednesday, Miami’s already remote chances of moving to fifth or sixth will move closer to a mathematical impossibility. Miami trails No. 5 Orlando by 3 1/2 games after the Raptors drubbed Orlando on Sunday. The Heat trails No. 6 Atlanta by three games.
This story was originally published March 29, 2026 at 7:21 PM.
Barry Jackson has written for the Miami Herald since 1986 and has written the Florida Sports Buzz column since 2002.