Erik Spoelstra spoke about the court at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland after Miami Heat guard Dru Smith sustained a knee injury during Miami’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.
“It’s a dangerous floor,” Spoelstra said. “I don’t know the history of injuries here, but we’ve had a couple near scares in previous years when guys are closing out in that corner. Thankfully, nobody’s been injured before, but it’s an accident waiting to happen. You close out and all of a sudden you’re going off a cliff. It’s just so dangerous. As soon as he stayed down, we all knew that’s probably what happened.”
The injury occurred when Smith jumped to contest a corner 3-point attempt by Max Strus in the second quarter. When Smith landed, his foot slipped off of the playing surface. The court is slightly elevated, and as a result, there is a ledge outside of the playing area.
At this point, Spoelstra isn’t sure about the severity of Smith’s injury, but he’s confident that it would have been avoided if the court were normal and not elevated.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” Spoelstra said. “Dru is mentally tough. … It’s really unfortunate for an effort play. If the court was normal, I don’t think there would have been any kind of incident.”
Despite the injury to Smith, the Heat were still able to pull out a commanding 129-96 victory over the Cavs to move to 10-5 on the season. Cleveland dropped to 8-7 with the loss.
Smith has appeared in nine games for the Heat so far this season, and he’s averaging 4.3 points, 1.6 rebounds and 1.6 assists in 14.6 minutes per performance. Given the fact that the guard hasn’t played a major role for the team, the Heat should be able to get by if Smith is forced to miss any game action as a result of the injury, but they can’t be thrilled with the development.
In addition to losing Smith, Miami was also missing center Bam Adebayo for the contest against Cleveland due to a bruised left hip. The good news for Heat fans is that Adebayo’s ailment isn’t expected to linger.
“It’s not a lingering thing,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo. “He’s padded. He just took a hard fall in the Chicago game (Monday night) in the exact same spot that he did earlier in the season when he had to miss a game.”
The Heat will be back in action for an In-Season Tournament game against the New York Knicks on Friday night. Miami is currently 2-0 in tournament action with two games remaining in group play.
Meanwhile, the Cavs, who are 2-1 in tourney play, will be in action against the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday in a non-tournament game.
