Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
More road woe for Heat
Winslow and Dragic can’t make shots as team falls to 10-22
CHARLOTTE — The injuries have meant doing it the hard way every night for the Miami Heat. When Justise Winslow and Goran Dragic can’t make shots it just compounds the challenge.
That left the Heat in the unusual position in Thursday night’s 91-82 loss to the Charlotte Hornets of . . . Josh Richardson and Tyler Johnson or bust.
With Winslow shooting 0 for 9, Dragic 2 of 11 and Hassan Whiteside closing with a pedestrian 8 points and 10 rebounds, the Heat’s road losing streak reached six as the overall record fell to 10-22, more lottery balls falling into the Heat’s possession.
“It’s tough,” Winslow said, “because you want to be out there. You want to be helping your team. Hopefully tomorrow it will get better.”
For Dragic, it was an effort just pushing through the back spasms that had sidelined him from Tuesday’s loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder at AmericanAirlines Arena.
“It’s a weird feeling when the back tightens up,” he said. “You cannot explode. Right now, it’s really tight, sore.
“It doesn’t make sense when I cannot do my job. No excuses — I was bad tonight.”
It wasn’t for lack of trying from Richardson and Johnson.
A game after tying his career high of 22 points, Richardson went for 20.
“It’s because my knee has been feeling a
lot better,” he said, having missed all of training camp and the first week of the season with a sprained right medial collateral ligament.
Johnson sparked the Heat off the bench with 18 points, but lamented, like coach Erik Spoelstra, the Heat’s 17 turnovers that led to 21 Charlotte points.
“I thought guys were trying to make plays,” he said, “and guys just turned the ball over.”
Even on the second night of a back-to-back set, Kemba Walker and Nicolas Batum had enough in response for the Hornets, with Walker closing with 22 points, and Batum with 16 points, 13 rebounds and eight assists. It allowed Charlotte to win despite shooting just .387 from the field, reprieved by the Heat’s 6-of-13 foul shooting.
But it was the shooting of Winslow and Dragic that stood out. For all the wrong reasons.
“Goran probably shouldn’t have been out there,” Spoelstra said, casting doubt on Dragic’s availability for Friday’s second game of this back-to-back set, at TD Garden against the Boston Celtics.
Of Winslow being off, Spoelstra said, “When he’s open, he’s had plenty of games when he’s made them pay for those.”
The Heat moved within 85-81 with 3:14 to play on a Johnson basket, leading to a Charlotte timeout. The teams then traded free throws for an 86-82 Hornets lead. But Winslow then fell to his final 0 for 9, missing a runner in the lane with 1:54 to play, with Walker converted a 3-pointer 14 seconds later for an 89-82 Charlotte lead.
With Dragic back, Spoelstra rolled out his 12th starting lineup of the season, with Luke Babbitt back as the starting power forward in place of Derrick Williams, who this time did not play.
The Hornets opened the third quarter with an 8-0 run and then put together an 11-0 run midway through the period, pushing to a nine-point lead, on the way to taking a 73-66 lead into the fourth.
Richardson kept the Heat afloat with all 20 of his points in the first three periods.
The Hornets outscored the Heat 31-17 in the third period after outscoring the Orlando Magic 35-13 in the third quarter a night earlier.
With Richardson scoring all 13 of his first-half points in the second quarter, the Heat took a 49-42 lead into the intermission, after shooting 7 of 13 on 3-pointers in the first half.
It was an odd box score for the Heat at the break, with the Heat’s offense over the first two periods paced by Richardson, Wayne Ellington and Luke Babbitt.
The Heat’s early offense was limited to Babbitt’s 3-of-3 shooting for seven points in the first quarter, with the rest of the Heat 5 of 16 in the opening period. That had the Hornets ahead 21-19 going into the second period.
The game opened a stretch of 8 of 9 on the road for the Heat.
The Hornets have now won four of the past five regular-season meetings, with the Heat ousting the Hornets 4-3 in the first round of last season’s playoffs. The victory extended the Hornets’ home winning streak to five.