![\"Miami](\"https:\/\/images2.minutemediacdn.com\/image\/upload\/c_crop,x_0,y_0,w_4033,h_2268\/c_fill,w_720,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto\/images\/GettyImages\/mmsport\/115\/01jnpgaa609dgk3dr54b.jpg\")
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In what has been a nightmare of a season for Terry Rozier, Wednesday night\u2019s fourth quarter against the Cleveland Cavaliers may have been the rock bottom.<\/p>\n
There doesn\u2019t seem to be a pinch coming to wake Rozier up. With less than 20 games left, the Miami Heat cannot afford to waste time waiting\/hoping for Rozier to resemble the player they thought they traded for last January.<\/p>\n
The Heat, 29-32, are jammed at seventh in the East standings. They are five games behind the sixth-place Detroit Pistons \u2013 likely an insurmountable distance at this stage. The Heat should be more concerned about what\u2019s behind them. The Orlando Magic and Atlanta Hawks each trailing by less than two games.<\/p>\n
Nobody wants to be in the play-in tournament, but if you have to be playing that week, you want the No. 7 seed that comes with two chances to win one game on your home court.<\/p>\n
A win Wednesday not only would have provided the Heat with support in the standings, but it also would have marked one of the biggest upsets of the regular season. A Heat team, missing three starters, taking down a fully healthy team with the NBA\u2019s best record riding an 11-game win streak.<\/p>\n
And yet, despite the narrow defeat and Bam Adebayo\u2019s starry heroics, it\u2019s hard not to be disappointed. The Heat could have won that game, and the decision to play Rozier a team-high 40 minutes may have cost them their biggest win of the season.<\/p>\n
Even in a season that has admittedly not been coach Erik Spoelstra\u2019s best, Wednesday night\u2019s decision to play Rozier for 22 second-half minutes, including the entire fourth quarter, ranks among his most confounding. (Right up there with calling a timeout he didn\u2019t have in a loss to the Detroit Pistons earlier in the season.)<\/p>\n
Rozier missed all eight of his shots and turned the ball over three times while playing more minutes than any of his teammates after halftime.<\/p>\n
You might think the lowlight package making the rounds on social media is a deep fake. It\u2019s not. This stuff really happened. I saw it.<\/p>\n Terry Rozier might be the worst player ever \ud83d\ude2d\ud83d\udc80 pic.twitter.com\/OStjVu95XZ<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/BricksCenter\/status\/1897474497240031448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1897474497240031448%7Ctwgr%5E89924005f756d142302d167f4827bfa7d650799c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fallucanheat.com%2Ftime-miami-heat-to-bench-terry-rozier<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It\u2019s not just one game, one second half, one fourth quarter for Rozier. It\u2019s been something like this all season.<\/p>\n Terry Rozier is shooting 26.1% from three since January 1st, worst of any player with 125 attempts.<\/p>\n He has 33 turnovers, 33 fouls & 33 made threes since the start of 2025.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/keerthikau\/status\/1897482926121422977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1897482926121422977%7Ctwgr%5E89924005f756d142302d167f4827bfa7d650799c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fallucanheat.com%2Ftime-miami-heat-to-bench-terry-rozier<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n ESPN recently unveiled a new catch-all metric called \u201cNet Points.\u201d According to the site, Net Points \u201cuses play-by-play data to evaluate a player’s performance. It quantifies every rebound, shot, turnover and free throw and assigns credit and blame to the players on the court. It divides credit and blame based on the difficulty of the players’ contributions to the success or failure of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Net Points, Rozier has been the sixth-worst player in the league this season.<\/p>\n ESPN recently unveiled a new catch-all metric called “Net Points.”<\/p>\n According to Net Points, Terry Rozier has been the sixth-worst player in the NBA this season. pic.twitter.com\/Fy2mvtvn0Z<\/p>\n<\/div>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/wcgoldberg\/status\/1897734585787572675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1897734585787572675%7Ctwgr%5E89924005f756d142302d167f4827bfa7d650799c%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fallucanheat.com%2Ftime-miami-heat-to-bench-terry-rozier<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n It\u2019s time for Spoelstra to bench Rozier for good.<\/p>\n I know, he only had 10 players on standard contracts available in Cleveland.<\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t matter. Rozier should not have played. And certainly shouldn\u2019t have led the team in minutes. (I still can\u2019t get over this.)<\/p>\n Davion Mitchell, Alec Burks, Duncan Robinson, Pelle Larsson\u2026 all of them should be playing over Rozier. At the start of the game. In crunch time. Doesn\u2019t matter. Heck, give Josh Christopher and Isaiah Stevens a shot if Miami is in a pickle.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve seen Spoelstra bench high-priced players before. Robinson couldn\u2019t get off the pine when he was in a shooting slump two years ago. It didn\u2019t matter that he had just signed a new, eight-figure contract.\u00a0Robinson didn’t have it and Spoelstra did what he felt gave his team the best chance to win.<\/p>\n And guess what? Robinson bounced back the next season. The same can happen for Rozier. Heck, it probably will. He\u2019s too talented for it not to. But it\u2019s not happening this season. He and the Heat have run out of time.<\/p>\n Spoelstra recently admitted that he hasn\u2019t made all the right rotation decisions this season. It can be hard with a changing roster and new pieces.<\/p>\n This one, however, is easy.<\/p>\n It’s time for the Miami Heat to bench Terry Rozier if they want to maintain any hope of making the playoffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":40306,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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