Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 118-113 loss to the Dallas Mavericks (30-26) on Thursday night at American Airlines Center to close its two-game trip at 0-2. The Heat (25-28) now enters the All-Star break before resuming its schedule on Feb. 21 against the Raptors in Toronto:

In a game between two depleted rosters, the Heat blew another fourth-quarter lead and now enters the All-Star break on its first four-game losing skid of the season. The Heat also stands three games below .500 for the first time this season. The Heat was missing Bam Adebayo (left knee contusion), Andrew Wiggins (stomach illness), Josh Christopher (G League), Keshad Johnson (G League), Kevin Love (personal reasons), Terry Rozier (stomach illness), Dru Smith (left Achilles surgery) and Isaiah Stevens (G League) against the Mavericks. This left the Heat with just 10 available players.

The Mavericks were without Anthony Davis (left adductor strain), Daniel Gafford (right knee sprain), Kyrie Irving (right shoulder soreness), Dereck Lively II (right ankle stress fracture), Caleb Martin (right hip strain), Dwight Powell (right hip strain), Klay Thompson (left foot sprain) and P.J. Washington (right ankle sprain) against the Heat. This left the Mavericks with only nine available players.

But not even a 40-point performance from the only NBA All-Star available on Thursday, Tyler Herro, could save the Heat in Dallas. In a competitive game that included 32 lead changes and 15 ties, the Mavericks took control with a 12-0 fourth-quarter run to turn a four-point deficit with 5:09 to play into an eight-point lead with 2:39 remaining. “It happened fast,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Dallas’ game-changing run. “By the time I called that time out, it was a minute and a half 8-0 run. We’re going to correct that.

We’re going to get better. We have enough experience with it now.” The Heat showed some fight by cutting the deficit to three points with 52.6 seconds left. The Heat then forced the Mavericks into a 24-second shot-clock violation, putting itself in position to potentially tie the game. But on the ensuing possession, Herro missed a corner three that would have tied the score with 16.2 seconds to play before the Mavericks clinched the win with two free throws from Spencer Dinwiddie. Herro tied a season-high with 40 points on 15-of-30 shooting from the field, 3-of-14 shooting on threes and 7-of-9 shooting from the foul line to go with eight rebounds, three assists and three steals in the loss. It marked just the third game in Herro’s NBA career that he has hit the 40-point mark in. But the Heat’s defense didn’t offer enough resistance, as the short-handed Mavericks totaled 118 points on 51.1 percent shooting from the field on Thursday. Dante Exum led the Mavericks with a team-high 27 points.

Max Christie added 19 points and Dinwiddie contributed 18 points. “I think our disposition and the way we came out could have been better,” Herro said. “Just our energy and effort, I thought we could have given a little bit more on both sides of the ball, especially defensively.” Thursday capped off a painful few days for the Heat, which also blew a 10-point fourth-quarter lead in Wednesday’s loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City. “Everybody wants to be better in these situations when we’re up,” Spoelstra said. “We’ll take a few days off. I’ll get to work, the staff will get to work. We’ll do what we need to do. I promise, we’re going to correct this.” The NBA All-Star break comes at a good time for Adebayo.

Adebayo was one of the eight Heat players held out on Thursday, missing the game because of a left knee contusion that he suffered on a knee-to-knee collision during Wednesday’s loss to the Thunder. It marks just the second game that Adebayo has missed this season. Despite playing through some pain on Wednesday, Adebayo closed the Heat’s loss in Oklahoma City with an impressive stat line that included 27 points, 15 rebounds and four assists in 35 minutes.

“He was able to finish the game, the adrenaline,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo on Thursday. “I thought he was really good last night. It stiffened up on him a little bit on the plane. Then this morning, it got worse. So, he’ll have time to rest it.” In fact, Adebayo will have a full week to rest before the Heat resumes its schedule on Feb. 21 against the Raptors. Adebayo, a three-time NBA All-Star, was not selected for this year’s All-Star Game. The good news for Adebayo and the Heat is he enters the break playing his best basketball of the season.

Adebayo, 27, has averaged 21.3 points, 11.7 rebounds and 4.5 assists per game while shooting 52.9 percent from the field over his last 10 games. With so many out, the Heat was forced to use its 14th different starting lineup of the season. The Heat went with a makeshift starting group of Davion Mitchell, Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kyle Anderson and Kel’el Ware on Thursday against the Mavericks. Anderson, who made his first start for the Heat since being dealt to Miami last week as part of the Jimmy Butler trade, provided solid minutes in the loss. He finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and two blocks in 27 minutes while recording a team-best plus/minus of plus 13.

“Kyle gave us some good minutes, which it was good to see what he can do and what he can add,” Spoelstra said. The Heat then used Alec Burks, Nikola Jovic, Pelle Larsson and Duncan Robinson off the bench to complete its nine-man rotation. The only available Heat player who didn’t get into Thursday’s game was Haywood Highsmith. Ware took advantage of a depleted Mavericks frontcourt early, but he was quiet in the second half. At 6-foot-7, Olivier-Maxence Prosper and Kessler Edwards were the tallest players in the Mavericks’ starting lineup on Thursday.

The only available Mavericks player taller than 6-foot-7 was seldom-used 7-foot rookie center Kylor Kelley, who played in just the seventh game of his NBA career on Thursday. Ware made the most of this opportunity early on, totaling 15 first-half points on 7-of-10 shooting from the field. He also threw down three dunks in the first two quarters. But Ware scored just two points on 1-of-4 shooting from the field while committing two turnovers in the second half, as the Mavericks’ switching defense was able to keep Ware and the Heat’s offense from generating too many quality paint looks down the stretch. “You always say, who can get who to blink first. I think we were getting them to blink in the first half with his minutes,” Spoelstra said of Ware. “They were getting us to blink in the second half.” Ware finished the loss with 17 points, nine rebounds, one assist, one steal and one block in 32 minutes. “There’s always more to give,” Ware said. “There’s always a lesson to be learned, there’s more to give. Just come back the next game and improve on what you were thinking about from the last game.” The Heat has some work to do when it returns from the All-Star break if it’s going to avoid the NBA’s play-in tournament.

At 25-28, the Heat enters the break in ninth place in the Eastern Conference. With the NBA’s play-in tournament featuring the seventh-through-10th-place teams competing for the final two playoff seeds in each conference, the Heat is currently on track to have to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament for the third straight season. In each of the last two seasons, the Heat has advanced past the play-in tournament to make the playoffs as the East’s No. 8 seed.

But with the Heat three games behind the sixth-place Detroit Pistons and four games behind the fifth-place Milwaukee Bucks, it still has an opportunity to avoid another play-in tournament appearance this season. The Heat has at least one thing working in its favor, as 18 of the final 29 regular-season games that it has left to play after the All-Star break will come at home. Miami has just 11 road games remaining on its regular-season schedule, and six of those 11 road games come against teams currently with losing records. “We just need to get on the same page going into these last 29 games,” Herro said.