No Wade, no Dragic, no problem
MEMPHIS —With no Dwyane Wade or Goran Dragic, the Heat got a collective effort to top the upstart Memphis Grizzlies 100-97 on Friday night at FedEx Forum in one of team’s more impressive performances of the season.
It was Josh Richardson and Kelly Olynyk, who finished with 18 points each. It was Tyler Johnson with 17, Derrick Jones Jr. with nine of his 13 in the fourth quarter and James Johnson with 12.
The Heat went on an 11-0 run early in the fourth quarter and never surrendered it, making defensive stand after defensive stand. A meaningless Marc Gasol 3-pointer with 0.8 seconds left provided the final margin.
After a 111-84 defeat against the Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, one Heat coach Erik Spoelstra called the team’s “worst game of the year,” Miami (12-16) rebounded against the Grizzlies (16-12).
Miami is now 3-2 on the season-long six-game Western Conference road trip, which comes to an end Sunday in New Orleans against the Pelicans.
In his 16th and final season, Wade missed his last game in Memphis with back soreness. Dragic was sidelined for the 11th time in the Heat’s last 13 games, again with a troublesome right knee.
Memphis got points at or near the buzzer in the second and third quarters.
Three degrees of Heat from Friday’s game:
1. Back soreness for Wade: “Old,” Wade simply said in the FedEx Forum visitors locker room pregame. “My back has been bothering me. I’ve been playing through it, but [with the] flight yesterday, [I] woke up this morning very tight.
“It’s not going to do no better playing [Friday] feeling this way. I’m just going to hurt the team out there.”
Spoelstra pregame called it “general soreness.”
Wade originally landed on the Heat’s injury report Friday afternoon with the team listing him as questionable but citing illness.
“He’s not feeling well,” a Heat spokesperson said at the team’s shootaround, which Wade didn’t attend.
2. Return of Whiteside: Center Hassan Whiteside was in the starting lineup in his first game back from paternity leave.
Whiteside finished with six points on 3-of-6 shooting, seven rebounds, two assists and two blocks..
While mostly uneventful, he was in the thick of defensive action in the first half. On one of his two blocks, he had an impressive swat of Gasol’s driving layup as Whiteside moved his feet. He was called for a foul on a play where his lip was bloodied, complaining to the Heat athletic trainer and his bench that “it’s a foul on my face” as play was stopped and Whiteside received medical attention.
His first shot attempt was a corner 3-pointer that missed badly, but he got a much closer look shortly thereafter on a dunk.
Whiteside had missed the first four games of the road trip before joining the team for practice in Memphis on Thursday night. While home taking care of his first son, Jayden Legend, Whiteside was able to find time to do conditioning with player development coach Anthony Carter.
3. Threes and D: The Heat were sure happy to shoot the 3-pointer Friday night, firing up 39 of them (making 15) by game’s end, one off their season high.
During the 11-0 run early in the fourth, a Jones Jr. 3 ignited it. Then it was Tyler Johnson and Olynyk after a Jones dunk.
Johnson and Olynyk each hit four from deep. Josh Richardson and James Johnson drilled two apiece.
The pace slowed down in the middle two quarters and Spoelstra employed different defensive strategies, switching to a modified 2-3 zone and even pressing at one point. Miami won the low-scoring second and third periods, 22-21 and 24-20, respectively.