What led to the Miami Heat's game against the Denver Nuggets getting out of hand?

On Wednesday night, the Miami Heat lost to the Denver Nuggets 122-112. Although the score doesn't quite illustrate a blowout loss, the game got out of the Heat's hands in the first half and they were just not able to regain control from there. Here are the biggest reasons this occurred:

Rebounding: The Heat came into this game having lost ten consecutive regular season games to the Nuggets, still missing their best scorer in Tyler Herro and with the Nuggets having arguably their best roster in the Nikola Jokic era.

Despite all of that, the Heat threw out any chance they had of winning this game in the first half with the rebounding differential. At halftime, the Nuggets had 36 rebounds to the Heat's 17. Notably, the Nuggets had 14 offensive rebounds to the Heat's 1.

The result was the Nuggets finishing the first half with 16 more field goal attempts than the Heat and a 123.6 offensive rating, (would rank first in the NBA), to the Heat's 111.1, (would rank 25th).

It's extremely difficult to overcome that significant of a difference in the possession battle against anybody, but especially against a legitimate championship contender that features the best big man (and perhaps player) in the world.

Funny enough, however, despite Nikola Jokic having his way with the Heat, (33 points on 66.7 percent shooting, 16 assists and 15 rebounds), the Heat actually did a decent enough job holding down the Nuggets' high-powered offense.

The Nuggets finished the game with a 26th percentile 86.7 offensive rating in the halfcourt to the Heat's 70th percentile 102.2 mark.

In the second half of the game, the Heat did a better job on the glass, only getting out-rebounded by four, which helped in bringing down the Nuggets' second half offensive rating to 105.9.

However, in a game without hot three-point shooting, where they were trying to claw back without perhaps their two best players in the hardest road arena to play in, it did not help that the Heat were not able to take advantage of the extra opportunities they afforded themselves with the improved effort on the boards.

They converted on 48 percent of their twos in the second half after hitting 62.5 percent of them in the first. This resulted in a 105.9 second half offensive rating for the Heat, which would rank 28th in the league.

Bam Adebayo: The three-time All-Star and perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate went down with an apparent foot injury in the first quarter of the game and was listed as questionable to return, an obviously significant blow to the team while already missing Herro.

Here’s the play earlier where Bam appears to hurt his foot. https://t.co/5KkFmP5EGZ pic.twitter.com/obVRWh3Mq0
— Will Manso (@WillManso) November 6, 2025

“I felt a pain in my foot so I took it upon myself to check myself out and go see what happened," Adebayo said after the game. "We’ll figure it out. We’ll get more tests tomorrow and see how it goes.”

Bam: "We'll figure it out, get more tests tomorrow, and see how we are."

"It was too much to play through. Obviously you don't want to do anything more to cause lingering effects."

"We just got to wait and see." pic.twitter.com/VsBQt2DagM
— Naveen Ganglani (@naveenganglani) November 6, 2025

So far this season, the Heat's defensive rating drops by almost ten points per 100 possessions when Adebayo, the one-time All-Defensive First teamer and four-time All-Defensive Second Teamer, is off the floor, (from 108.02 to 117.62).

Additionally, their offensive rating drops by about six points per 100 possessions this season when Adebayo is off the court, (119.14 to 113.72). Altogether, the Heat put up a Net Rating of 11.12 when Adebayo plays, -3.9 when he doesn't.

Although it's tough to extrapolate much from a one-game sample size in which he played just eight minutes, the Heat outscored the Nuggets by 14 points per 100 possessions in that time. For the rest of the game, the Heat were outscored by nearly the same amount.

Alexander Toledo is a contributor to Miami Heat On SI and producer/co-host of the Five on the Floor podcast, covering the Heat and NBA. He can be reached at toledoalexander22@gmail.com. Twitter: @tropicalblanket

What led to the Miami Heat's game against the Denver Nuggets getting out of hand?

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