1. If this were a regular season game, it would have qualified as one of Tyler Herro’s better games of the season as Herro scored 30 on 19 shots (4-of-7 from three) while running large chunks of the offense with much of Miami’s rotation – including Jimmy Butler, Josh Richardson and Caleb Martin – unavailable.
Herro’s prettiest score of the night might have been taking Jaren Jackson Jr. baseline, sealing up under the rim and going to the opposite side for an and-one. He’s mentioned on numerous occasions his desire to get to the free-throw line more often (4-of-5 there tonight) and while he’s not going to be Butler or LeBron James or James Harden, he’s so much more comfortable taking contact and getting a shot up than he was even two years ago. Even if the attempts do less spiking and more trending upward, that willingness and ability to play through physicality only helps Herro’s pace and control of the half-court game. His best possession of the night, however, came in the third quarter when he drew Jackson Jr. on a switch and, instead of trying to take on the difficult challenge, pulled Jackson Jr. out of the paint and waited for Adebayo, with Herro’s man now on him, to establish position near the rim for a catch. Being a good playmaker isn’t just being a good passer, it’s controlling the flow of the game and seeing where the passes will be. More than any other area of his game, that might be where we see the most progress this year.
As for the game itself, it was hilariously – if you remember how last season played out – the third clutch game in a row in three tries this preseason. Memphis led for most of the night and was often up double digits in the third quarter while most of the available regulars were playing – the Grizzlies were also missing quite a few – but just as they did against Charlotte the guys trying to make the roster came in like their season depended on it and took the victory, 132-124. Not that it should matter, but Miami is now 2-1 in preseason with two games to go before the real thing.
2. Fun little game within the game in this one with Bam Adebayo and Jaren Jackson Jr. – last season’s Defensive Player of the Year – taking turns going right at each other. Because each of them is such a strong individual defender, neither team seemed particularly interested in sending help which meant we got around 10 possessions of the kind of pure one-on-one action we rarely see much of between stars.
Jackson Jr. took a few of the early rounds, scoring a couple and getting a couple of stops, but Adebayo answered right back by spiking one of Jackson Jr.’s driving shots out of bounds immediately after Jackson Jr. had used to same move to draw a foul. Adaptive defense, one might say. Later, Adebayo missed a floater as he drove at the space Jackson Jr. was conceding in a pick-and-roll, but soon after he opted to go to the post and hit a nice hook over the top. Jackson Jr. did hit a couple of threes – Adebayo took one, too, top of the arc off a sideline out of bounds situation – so the tracking data might give him an extra point or two off the individual matchup, but to our eyes it was mostly even. Adebayo finished the night with 26 points on 20 shots, looking at comfortable as ever with his toolkit and finishing with force whenever he got a catch in the paint. And it’s never too early to start talking about his defense, even in preseason, which included a left-handed swat of Desmond Bane’s up-and-under layup that should have been geometrically impossible.
3. While Thomas Bryant continues to fill in seamlessly for Adebayo during the bench shifts, he’s also a relatively known quantity and we don’t need to spend much of preseason analyzing his play when we know much of what he’s going to bring. Pretty much everything Miami runs with Adebayo, they can run with Bryant, which simplifies the requirements of everyone else around him.
Of the younger players, though, Jamal Cain – getting minutes in the first half as part of the rotation with so many players out – had his second straight very good game, going backdoor for alley oops, hitting a corner three and coming up with several offensive rebounds that it didn’t look like he had a chance of grabbing, all while pestering Derrick Rose on the perimeter. We’ve been watching Cain (14 points on nine shots) long enough, including with the Sioux Falls Skyforce last season, that it would be easy to take some of what he does for granted, but you still have to do it with consistency in the big league to earn your minutes and after a relatively inauspicious start to training camp and preseason, Cain has done everything he's needed to do in order to keep his name firmly in the conversation for the 14th roster spot.