After the Miami Heat beat the Toronto Raptors on Friday night in overtime, the team comes off the All-Star break with a bang, though it featured what has been their fatal flaw all season. There is not much time left for the Heat as there is a sense of urgency to correct their mistakes and make a significant push for the playoffs, but this fatal flaw has to be fixed to do so.

While it has been a problem in the past, Miami this season has been plagued by getting off to hot starts with double-digit leads, but are unable to sustain them towards the second half. The same almost happened Friday when the team built a strong lead early, but the Raptors would come roaring back to the point where they ended up tying the game, sending it into overtime.

Even the Heat’s captain Bam Adebayo would mention this flaw after the victory to the media where he said the team has “to stop scaring” themselves with the breakdowns according to The Miami Herald.

“Man, we have to stop scaring ourselves like that,” Adebayo said. “We have to stop doing that. Great win to kick off post-All-Star. Great win for us. We had to do that on the defensive end. We got stops and that’s what mattered in OT.”

Heat led by Tyler Herro, has to be forefront in late-game collapses

Before the win in Toronto, Miami entered the All-Star break on a four-game skid where it featured several collapses to such squads as the No. 1 seed in the West the Oklahoma City Thunder, and at the time, the depleted Dallas Mavericks. Both games saw the team lead early, only to lose it by the end, especially in the former where the Heat led by double-digits only for the Thunder to come back strong.

One of the ways teams have been pressuring Miami late in games is putting more pressure on the team’s main star now in Tyler Herro as he spoke after the loss to Oklahoma City about overcoming those obstacles.

“Just finding ways to play through adversity, playing through when a team ramps up their pressure like that and starts denying me the ball,” Herro said on Feb. 12. “Just finding different ways to get into our offense so we can get the shots we want without getting taken out of what we want to do.”

Heat is ready to fix the fatal flaw of collapses late in the game

After the loss to the Thunder, the Heat ranked second in the NBA with the amount of times they came into the fourth quarter with double-digit leads and blew them in the frame.

“It’s not fun going through this,” Spoelstra said after the Thunder loss. “But we’re learning our lessons. We’re going to continue to get better. And then ultimately, I want to see us make real strides in our resolve and grit when the game is not going the way we want it to go. Can we still function? Can we still do the things that put us in a position to have success?”

To give the organization some leeway, they have been going through a major change when the Heat traded away Jimmy Butler to the Golden State Warriors. Losing a key player like Butler, they got back Andrew Wiggins, Davion Mitchell, and Kyle Anderson in a package where one of the goals is getting them acclimated to the system.

Heat honest about contending status

While the team will look to those three, especially Wiggins and Mitchell since they will be in the starting lineup for the foreseeable future, it all surrounds Herro. The Heat’s lone All-Star even said that they are not contenders at the moment, but they have pieces to course correct according to NBA Radio.

“It’s hard to do. I don’t think people realize how hard it is to win a championship, and everything has to fall in line,” Herro said during the break. “But I think right now, we started the season with Jimmy [Butler] saying we’re going to try to win a championship. I think obviously, if we’re calling a spade a spade, we’re not contenders right now.”

“But I think with the team that we’re trying to put together, we have a lot of young guys that can really help us win. Kel’el Ware is coming into his own Niko Jovic, [Jaime] Jaquez. So I think we have a lot of young guys that are starting to, you know, really see where their role can be with the new roster we have.”

At any rate, if the Heat can clean up their mistakes towards the end of mistakes, they could be a scary team that has the experience in the playoffs to make some noise. Miami is currently 26-28 after Friday’s win as they are eighth in the Eastern Conference with their next contest against the Milwaukee Bucks on Sunday.