Miami Heat Show Grit in Defeating Washington Wizards

Despite just eight players, the Miami Heat top a short-handed Wizards team

The Miami Heat had just eight players available. 

The Washington Wizards were without eight players. 

In the end, it was the Heat better handling the bout with adversity. Tyler Herro scored 32 points to lead the Heat to a 119-112 victory Tuesday at FTX Arena. Both teams were short-handed mostly because several players were put in the league's health protocols because of COVID-19.  

“It doesn’t mean that there’s not anxiety about all of this stuff," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "I think everybody has some kind of feeling. I know I have anxiety every time I have to go test. I feel 100 percent. You feel like you’re just leaving things up to chance. I get it. This team has great resolve. A great positive approach every single day. We’ve been getting these kind of news updates basically the past month, whether it’s injury or COVID. Guys just keep trying to find solutions. We were able to do that [against Washington]." 

Here's a rundown of the missing players: 

Wizards -- Bradley Beal, Thomas Bryant, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Rui Hachimura, Montrezl Harrell, Anthony Gill, Aaron Holiday and Raul Neto. 

Heat -- Kyle Lowry, Udonis Haslem and Max Strus Bam Adebayo, P.J. Tucker, Dewayne Dedmon, Markieff Morris and Victor Oladipo.

The Heat led by 28 before the Wizards made a late charge. 

"We had a lot of really good performances," Spoelstra said. "Obviously, we didn’t close it exactly the way we wanted to down the stretch, but there were some really good teaching moments there defensively. Offensively, we were able to get to our fourth quarter package.”

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