Giannis changes teams, but Heat’s start looks familiar

Giannis Antetokounmpo left the Bucks for South Beach, presumably with something better in mind. Three games into his Heat career, the scenery has changed more than the results.

Miami is 0-3 after Saturday’s 115-110 loss to the Hornets, and so far, this looks an awful lot like the situation Antetokounmpo left behind. Big expectations, uneven help and too much basketball spent trying to recover from what went wrong earlier.

This time, Giannis was part of the problem. He fouled out in 24 minutes with 14 points, six rebounds and three assists, as Sean Jordan of Roundtable Sports detailed.

The Heat entered the fourth quarter down 21 against a Hornets team missing Coby White and Kon Knueppel. Davion Mitchell helped make it respectable with 22 points and 10 assists, while Bam Adebayo added 20 points.

Good for them for fighting back. But needing a furious rally against a shorthanded Charlotte team wasn’t exactly the sales pitch when Miami traded for Giannis.

Of course, three games won’t tell us whether this works. Antetokounmpo and Adebayo need time together, and there are 79 more chances to get it right.

Still, the Heat acquired Giannis to move beyond this sort of frustration. So far, they’ve mostly given him a different uniform to experience it in.