Erik Spoelstra after the Heat’s opening rout: ‘None of us like to be humbled like that,’ and Giannis says ‘it starts with me’

Erik Spoelstra did not dress it up. The Miami Heat had spent the summer building toward Giannis Antetokounmpo’s first regular-season game in a Heat uniform, and on Wednesday night they lost it 131-106 at home to the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game Minnesota led by as many as 30.

“We’ll figure it out,” Spoelstra said afterward. “Whatever it is, none of us like to be humbled like that. We have a lot of competitors in the locker room, so we’ll get to it. We’ll get to the film and do what we need to do to start to shore that up.”

He said the fix starts with “the individual mentality and the collective mentality to do tough things,” and added: “You have to commit to doing ridiculously hard things to be able to defend in this modern NBA.”

‘He felt comfortable all night long’

The man who made it look easy was Anthony Edwards, who scored 45 with nine 3-pointers. Spoelstra said the Heat never made him uncomfortable. “He felt comfortable all night long,” he said. “We never really got him thinking about anything else other than the rim, and so we’re going to have to step up our defense. We know that, and it’s going to have to be all across the board with efforts and disruptiveness.”

“We’re capable of doing it,” he added. “We’re just going to have to get a lot better at committing to it, all five guys on the floor.”

Asked Erik Spoelstra about how the Wolves took control of the game: #Heat

“Edwards…he felt comfortable all night long. We never really got him thinking about anything else other than the rim, and so we're going to have to step up our defense. We know that, and it's going to… pic.twitter.com/iXyCrDI5fD

— Zachary Weinberger (@ZachWeinberger) October 22, 2026

Minnesota went 21-for-50 from 3, and Edwards (9-for-17) and LaMelo Ball (5-for-13) took 30 of those attempts. Spoelstra wanted to know how many of them were pull-up threes. “Those require another level of effort and backline defense. So if they’re dribble dancing at 26 feet, 28 feet, you’re going to have to uncomfortably crawl up.”

If the defender stays back, he said, the step-back becomes a clean look, “and while it looks like that’s far out there, those guys make those shots.” His conclusion: “We got tested early, but we’re going to get tested. This league is tough. There’s a lot more skill and space and 3-point shooting and speed than there ever has been.”

‘We didn’t look like us offensively’

Miami actually shot a better percentage from the field, 48 to 47, and still lost by 25. The difference was everywhere else: Minnesota made 13 more 3-pointers (21 to 8), grabbed 17 offensive rebounds to Miami’s four and won the rebounding battle 52-34.

Spoelstra said Antetokounmpo “was a force of nature, for sure,” but that the offense around him did not look like the one Miami ran all preseason. “We didn’t get many good looks,” he said. “We didn’t look like us offensively. You have to give Minnesota credit for that. But we were also doing things that were uncharacteristic.” He listed walking the ball up, waiting for play calls and settling for contested shots after one pass.

Antetokounmpo scored 35 on 13-for-19 shooting but finished with one assist before fouling out. Asked whether Minnesota had taken away his passing lanes, Spoelstra pointed at the whole offense. “Certainly not the way it looked during the preseason,” he said. “I get it. It’s preseason, but we’ve been developing a style of play that we have to trust.” Most of the Heat’s preseason games, he noted, had more than 30 assists. “We were not passing the ball tonight.”

On the glass, he described a team that stopped crashing. “The offensive end, we weren’t going,” he said. “It was five on the perimeter. Shoot it and watch.” At the other end, a few loose balls turned straight into Minnesota threes. “It felt like when we had the ball and then if it bobbled, it was an automatic three,” he said. “We’ll shore that up.”

Giannis: ‘It starts with me’

Antetokounmpo put the effort question on himself. “It starts with me,” he said, adding that he has to be better and “set the tone.”

“Our effort has to be better, it starts with me…” – Giannis after the #Heat’s opening loss: pic.twitter.com/cgXQxqiCSw

— Zachary Weinberger (@ZachWeinberger) October 22, 2026

The 35 points did not make him feel any better. He said he feels good when the team is clicking and playing with rhythm and pace, “when we win games. That’s when I feel good. Hopefully Friday I can do better.” His other message was trust. “You gotta trust one another,” he said. “We have to respond, and we have to be better.”

Bam Adebayo, who had 15 points, named the same problem areas as his coach. “It was our rebounding,” he said. “Offensive rebounding, 17 to our four.” He called rebounding and second-chance points “the big muscle areas we need to take care of,” and noted the Heat now have a bigger roster. “We expect to rebound,” he said.

He also said the defense was missing its identity. “We gotta have our swarming defense,” Adebayo said. “I feel like we weren’t swarming as much as I would have liked.” And he knew what Thursday would look like. “It’s game one, but we don’t want to make this a habit,” he said. “For us tomorrow, you know how Spo is, we’re about to watch three hours of film, and it would probably be all defense.”

Next: Detroit on Friday

It was Miami’s third straight loss in a season opener. Davion Mitchell had 11 assists, Andrew Wiggins and Mitchell scored 11 each and Klay Thompson had 10 in 16 minutes in his first regular-season game for the Heat.

The Heat host the Detroit Pistons on Friday at 8 p.m. ET, which is 3 a.m. Saturday in Cairo, and then play again on Saturday in the first back-to-back of their season.