The ball may not lie, but shooters do.
That bit of candor was offered by Max Strus in the wake of Saturday night’s 8-of-14 3-point shooting against the visiting Charlotte Hornets, which came two nights after the Miami Heat guard shot 2 of 11 from beyond the arc against the Hornets.
The typical response from shooters is that you can’t dwell on failure, have to put it behind you, move on, have a short memory.
But for Strus, the memories were too vivid, even with the Heat winning both of the matchups against Charlotte, now positioned to move to .500 with a victory Monday night over the visiting Phoenix Suns.
“Yes and no,” Strus said of the notion of short memory by those who shoot the longball. “You definitely remember it, but you can’t let it affect you. You’ve got to know the negatives of it and deal with it and then get in the gym and fix it and then get out and do the stuff you do.”
So that’s what Strus did, feeling he let teammates down in the Thursday victory that required overtime against the worst team in the Eastern Conference.
“I had a bad night the other night,” he said after Saturday’s 31-point performance. “Tried to flush that, get in the gym, figure out, recalibrate and I got it going early and teammates were looking for me.
“So I feel to have the trust from them after a night like I had the other night was special.”
So special that the fourth-year veteran closed one point and one 3-pointer shy of career highs.
“It can turn around real quick,” he said. “So you just got to have a positive mentality through it all and just keep shooting.”
Which teammates and the coaching staff made sure he did, amid this uneven start to the season by almost all of the team’s 3-point shooters.
“Particularly the last five games,” coach Erik Spoelstra said, “we all have felt, and particularly when we watched film, and have been able to review things, that there have been a lot of really good things, and you have to trust it.
“Particularly from the 3-point line, there’s going to be some ebbs and flows. But are you generating those shots in your wheelhouse? And I feel like we have, and that’s not just coach speak.”
But when it comes to player speak, Spoelstra said he could appreciate the need for Strus to see the ball go through the net early in Saturday’s victory, to help him regain his footing.
“We’re all human,” Spoelstra said. “Yeah, like it’s one thing for the staff and the players to say, ‘Hey, we’re generating great looks,’ but if the ball is not going in, and eventually [it’s] like what are you believing, reality or the perception?
“But we have a very level-headed group. The group understands when we’re getting to our strengths and when we’re not. The defense and opponents will have a say in that, as well. But we have a smart team. But even when we’re not getting to what we want to get to, the guys understand how we can try to get to our strength zones more. And that’s been part of the discipline.”
As is the extra work required of a shooter such as Strus, who no longer is finding the type of space at the 3-point line first experienced when he arrived in December 2020 as an undrafted neophyte out of the G League.
Now it has required more movement off the ball, cuts, relocating. The type of efforts that can be both draining and dynamic.
“He’s really worked at it,” Spoelstra said. “All of our 3-point shooters have worked at it, especially coming off of last year, where they were game-planned so much to get off that 3-point line.
“So they spent the entire offseason really trying to develop other aspects of the game. For Max, it’s really important, because he has great instincts as a cutter and off the ball, not just to run to the action or to the basket or to the basketball, but to generate some easy opportunities for us.”
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