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The Miami Heat snap their 5-game losing streak with a big win over the Cleveland Cavaliers and move back up to the 8th seed in the Eastern Conference.
After a rough stretch, the Heat came out strong, dominated the first quarter, and made key adjustments — including putting Norman Powell back into the starting lineup.
Kel’el Ware also stepped up with a huge performance.
In this episode of Battered Miami Heat Fans, we break down:
What changed in this win vs Cleveland
Norman Powell’s impact in the starting lineup
Kel’el Ware’s breakout performance
How the Heat got back on track
Where they stand in the Eastern Conference
A look ahead at the final 9 games of the season
Is this the start of another run?
Drop your thoughts in the comments 👇
Can the Heat hold onto a playoff spot?
Like, Subscribe, and join the Battered Family.
#MiamiHeat #HeatNation #HeatCulture
#HeatWin #NBA #ClevelandCavaliers
#NBAPostGame #KelElWare #NormanPowell #NBAStandings
#EasternConference #PlayoffPush
You're watching The Butterfound's network.
Zlana, the hero back.
Welcome everybody to episode number 78 of The Butterfound's podcast.
I'm your host, David.
Alongside me, as well as the day of Solana, how are you doing, sir?
Doing fantastic.
I mean, the heat got their first win out of 10 finals in the last stretch of this NBA season.
It was a huge team win.
Got a little nervous there in the third quarter of the day, not going to lie.
But the heat were able to make it through the fourth quarter battle and win a big game.
A big game, a game they needed to win to maintain their distance from the sixth, seventh,
and eighth seeds in the standings.
And unfortunately, you know, Philly won last night and so did Atlanta.
But but a big win, man, a big team win last night in Cleveland.
And they got to do it again on Friday.
I don't think anybody watched that game, watched that third quarter, watched the Cavs take
the lead in the fourth quarter and thought that he got this like nobody thought that I thought
that they were on their way to seven losses in a row.
We've been saying that there's a good chance that that happens.
Luckily, the Cavs were on the second out of a back-to-back.
In the first quarter, it showed the Miami Heat.
We just got out there and then just basically put it on them.
And they took advantage.
They took the first quarter.
They took a 20-19 lead.
And by the end of the first half, they were up by it was that they were up by it.
Yeah, so they were up by it was a 20-21.
Well, they were kicking ass.
And then the third quarter came, the third quarter, as you called it, playing it times,
came, turned this ugly head.
And you know, if it wasn't for BAM because he had a bad first half, BAM was the only light we had
in that second and the third quarter. I'm sorry.
And if it was not for BAM, showing up in that third quarter,
maybe we don't have enough juice to bring it back in the fourth quarter.
But the heat stopped the skid.
It ends up five games.
We got nine games to go and we listed it out.
We had 10 games, last 10 games.
We need to get at least seven of these.
Won't be easy, but we need seven.
We got the first one.
If we can somehow get the second one,
now the second one's going to be a lot harder because Cleveland is still top
fighting for positioning on the top of the Eastern Conference.
They finally have a rest day because they won't be the second out of back to back.
It's still in Cleveland.
You know, I don't want to, I'm trying to start on a clean slate.
Like to say, it's a clean slate, last 10 games.
Let's see where we're at before the playoffs.
So I don't want to say we'll probably lose.
But that's a big game because, like I've said, time and time again,
that Sunday game is a dub.
The Pacers might not even show up.
They might just give us the forfeit.
So don't even buy it over there.
It's in Indiana.
They might just give us the forfeit.
That's how bad they want to lose.
So don't worry about it.
Sunday, it's a dub.
If we can get the Cleveland game,
that's three wins.
And out of the next seven, the final seven,
we're looking at, we need just what,
four more out of those seven.
So we can get those seven ones we've been talking about.
So that Cleveland game is going to be big time.
Yeah, it is.
It is.
And last night, Max Truce, former heat player,
didn't play as he was resting.
Like you mentioned, on the second night of a back to back.
And he will be available on Friday.
So I believe the Cavs will be rested.
And the game will be very different on Friday.
We'll have to see what happens.
But yeah, we need to get seven out of these last 10.
You got the first one down.
You're one game back of Philadelphia.
Two games, one and a half back of Toronto for the six.
And two games back of Atlanta Hawks for the fifth seed, Daddy.
And they're right there.
They're right there.
They play Philadelphia.
They play Toronto twice.
They play Atlanta.
They play all these teams that are just ahead of them coming up
in these last seven eight games.
And it's going to be down to those games.
They're going to need to win those games
in order to qualify into the playoffs and get out of the play.
Isn't it crazy that they win last night?
They move up to eighth or land the moves down to tenth.
Like it's so jumbled up over there that it's like one lost one win.
Like brings you up and down, which is, which is exciting.
A little nerve wrecking also.
Luckily we have like some way competition towards the end of the season.
So talking about last night.
We've been talking about Pellars and you can't take Pellars and out of the starting lineup.
You can't take Pellars and out of the starting lineup.
They took about the starting lineup.
And it worked.
Now one thing that I would like to say is Norman Powell,
when he came back coming off the bench.
Norman Powell has been our best first quarter scorer.
Like he comes on and he first quarter, he's hot.
And coming off the bench, I guess you don't get that.
Maybe you take some of the water to get into rhythm.
Last night, he looked good.
I thought that just overall outside of that third quarter,
the team looked good in general.
Absolutely.
I mean, like we mentioned earlier in the pod,
I mean, excellent first half, other than that third quarter,
where they just got dominated by the Cleveland Cavaliers and not just Cleveland, but
I mean, Donovan Mitchell.
Man, Donovan Mitchell was on fire in that third quarter,
making threes from all over the place.
He made one.
I don't remember if it was in the third or the fourth quarter,
but he made one where he was off balance.
And it was like the shock lock was expiring.
And it just swished right in.
So yeah, they got hot in the third quarter,
but they were able to pull it off in the fourth quarter.
And talking about Norman Powell and starting and taking Paul Larson
and moving him on the bench, you know,
one thing I heard last night on the broadcast was,
Norman Powell is your all star, right?
Maybe he just feels more comfortable starting.
And Paul Larson is that type of player that you can plug and play anywhere
in the game.
And he had a great fourth quarter.
He did, he did.
I believe he had seven points in that fourth quarter.
Bam also with a great fourth quarter.
And and I think Spowe made the right decision
in inserting Powell into the starting lineup,
removing Paul Larson.
Because at this point, you have 10 games left,
you have to see what you have, right?
And you know, he basically just said,
you know, screw it.
I'm going to start these guys.
And it worked out for him.
So we'll see if he does the same thing on Friday.
I believe he will.
But Paul Larson, man, he's, so he's, he's my favorite player, man.
He's my favorite player on this team.
And Calilware also showed up big in the fourth quarter.
He ended up, he ended the game three for three from three,
he ended up five for five from the field.
He had 11 boards.
Calilware is like, he's like an enigma.
Like he just, he's good sometimes.
He played good defense yesterday.
And that's, I think that's his weakest point somehow.
And he's like a seven foot.
And he's just not great defensively.
He ended up the best positive plus minus,
a plus 32.
Like Calilware had himself a game.
And the thing is, you just can't count on him
doing it consistently.
Because I don't, I don't know if you'll do it again.
I don't know if he can put, do it to Evan Mobley and Jared Allen
to get on Friday.
But having bam and Calilware out there at the same time
when you're playing against the big lineup of Jared Allen
and Evan Mobley is definitely a good idea.
Well, Jared Allen didn't play that.
I'm sure Jared Allen didn't play.
Evan Mobley, yeah, Jared Allen didn't play.
So the, here's, here's the start of the day for everybody.
The heat are 22 and three, I believe.
22 and three when Calilware has a positive plus minus.
Last night, like you mentioned, plus 32,
the biggest plus minus of the season goes to Calilware.
Yes.
Nice.
So, I mean, not only that, you had,
he didn't play the third quarter, that's why.
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely it.
I mean, he didn't, he got insert,
bam played the entire third quarter.
But eight players and double figures.
I mean, it wasn't all around great team win.
The only player that didn't score in double figures
that played the game, in the game,
was Casper or Siacco Jonas, who played 14 minutes.
He had two points and he was over two.
Other than that, everybody had double digit scoring.
You had bam with 10 rebounds,
Calilware with 11.
Bam had seven assists, Danny.
That's, that's something that you don't see very often from bam.
You know, getting his assists numbers that high up there.
But man, I was excited to see them win last night
and it was a big gritty win.
It was and it puts us in position to, like I said, keep climbing.
Like you said, we're only a couple games
out of even six and fifth seed.
We got these next games coming up.
We got Cleveland on Friday in the end of Sunday.
Then we got Philly, which is a huge game.
Out of the next nine games,
I'd say the biggest game has to be Philly and Toronto, right?
Those, those three games.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, they're right ahead of you.
And Atlanta, yeah, those three teams are right ahead of you.
You know, you're one game back from Philly,
one and a half from Toronto, two from the Atlanta Hawks.
Those four games are probably the most important four games
of the entire season coming up.
Yeah, that's going to be an interesting.
And there, I had a question for you.
And just random off game topic.
Just but random heat question.
Ivan Shumper, I saw he's been saying that he doesn't want to hear bam talk about the 83 points
anymore because now he's starting to hate the whole 83 point thing.
Have you heard bam talking about 83 points a lot?
Because I don't remember him.
Like what does he talk like people are hating so much on the fact that he passed Kobe Bryant
that they're just making crap up in their head.
Yeah, I haven't heard anything.
I haven't even heard him on Shumper say anything.
The people who are talking are the NBA heads that are around the league,
that are the players, the ex players.
I mean, they're the ones that are talking, bam, bam just held up one little paper sign at the
end after the end of the game.
And then they made t-shirts of him with the sign.
Other than that, I hadn't heard bam mention the 83 point game other than the night that he did it.
No, yeah, I heard him say he was talking about.
I heard him say he doesn't want to be in the playing.
I've heard him say that a couple times.
I haven't heard him say like, man, I don't want to be in the play.
But hey, at least I got 83 points.
I'm like, I haven't heard him say anything.
People are like legit haters, like just applaud the man.
And the fact that he did it while he's barely getting 20 points every night,
like that was a crazy feat.
I don't care if it was a team that was tanking.
But yeah, that was just so weird.
When I read that, I was like, what is wrong with people?
Shut the fuck up.
That's it.
Like he got the 83.
He's not talking about everybody else is talking about it because they're trying to bring it down.
That's all it is.
It's like, well, we got to bring it down because he took it from Kobe, but I don't know.
I just thought it was weird, but Randall thought they came to my head.
All right, Solana, do you have any final words?
I think we've said it all what we had to say on the podcast.
So it'll be an interesting game on Friday.
We'll be watching and be happy to be back on Saturday talking about a heat win and a streak.
If we went on Friday, we went on through the game streak.
I'm saying it so much.
Watch me manifest the laws with how much I'm saying that we're going to be Indiana.
But if we be Cleveland, we're beating Indiana as the three game win streak.
We're it's happening.
I'm telling you just get just forfeit the game in the end.
All right.
If you're listening on audio, appreciate you listening to the end.
Please watch those in a comment.
If you watch your YouTube like it, subscribe.
And we'll be back like you said on Saturday morning talking about another heat win.
So until the next one, have a good one.
Battered Heat Fans: A Miami Heat Podcast
