Throughout the playoffs, we are going to be looking at the teams that lost their last game and look at what they can do to try and get a win.

During the regular season, the Miami Heat were one of the best teams at limiting turnovers.  Their turnover rate (the percentage of their possessions that ended in turnovers) was 9th in the league with a rate of 12.77.  However, against the Celtics, the Heat committed 19 turnovers.  Against a tame like Boston, that is way too much.

The biggest culprit in my opinion was Michael Beasley.  Beasley committed 5 turnovers during the game, and while Wade committed 7 himself, you can ignore those because he is the only option on the Heat.  That means more attention on him, and with more attention comes more turnovers.  Anyway, back to Beasley, while the Celtics are a good team, they didn’t really force any of these turnovers.  A lot of them were ones that could have been prevented:

Here, Beasley gets the ball on an ISO set, and there is no real options for him.  However, Beasley tries to force the issue and penetrate through a gap that isn’t there.  He compounds the over-penetration by leaving his feet before he knows what he is going to do with the basketball.  Caught in air, he tries to kick the ball out.  However, Rondo is able to get his hand on the pass and make the steal.

Again, this turnover is due to Beasley’s over penetration.  Here, he makes the catch and starts to go before he knows what he can do with it.  Again, he tries to squeeze into a gap he can’t fit in, and in his attempt to avoid the dig steal from Rondo, he travels.

Watching through all of the Heat’s turnovers (again, using the fantastic MySynergySports - which is available to the public now).  I counted 6 or 7 turnovers similar to this one.  In a 5 point game, 6 or 7 possessions is pretty important, and it probably cost the Heat the game.