Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Heat blow cold and hot
Miami blows 25-point lead over L.A., recovers for 104-101 win.
LOS ANGELES — To appreciate the exhale when this 104-101 victory over the Los Angeles Clippers was over, consider what the Miami Heat put themselves through Sunday at Staples Center.
There was a 25-point lead in the third quarter. A 23-point lead to open the fourth. Then it all was gone. After the Heat went the first 5:14 of the fourth quarter without a point.
Ultimately outscored 35-15 in the final period.
“That,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “had a little bit of crazy in it.” You think? These are the games that almost always snowball into misery. This certainly had that look. And then it didn’t. “They brought a different pace, different style and we kind of relaxed,” Heat forward James Johnson said. “Those are kind of moments we don’t need.”
But the ones the Heat nonetheless survived.
After the Clippers completed their comeback, moved to a 95-93 lead with 2:55 to play, there was a Josh Richardson 3-pointer and a pair of Goran Dragic free throws.
It was enough to push back into the lead ... temporarily.
Because with 26 seconds to play, after a Dragic turnover, there was a driving dunk in transition by Wesley Person for a 101-100 Clippers lead, and then yet another Heat turnover, this time by Tyler Johnson.
we got down we didn’t put our heads down, didn’t panic,” guard Wayne Ellington said.
Because this time the fate that had been so cruel to the Heat in Friday’s 95-94 loss to the Denver Nuggets at the start of this six-game trip began to turn.
Forced to foul, the Heat sent Clippers guard Austin Rivers, son of Clippers coach Doc Rivers, to the foul line with 17.1 seconds to play and the Clippers up one. Rivers missed both attempts.
Offered an opportunity for redemption, James Johnson seized it, working his way to the foul line with 8.7 seconds to play, where he made both free throws for a 102-101 lead.
“Just drilled in my muscle memory, keep shooting it the same way,” he said of the conversions.
That set up exactly what the Clippers wanted to set up after burning the last of their two timeouts — isolating power forward Blake Griffin against Heat center Hassan Whiteside off a pick-and-roll.
It was in a similar situation Friday when James Johnson committed a three-shot foul against Paul Millsap that allowed the Denver forward to sink the winning free throws.
This time Whiteside held his ground, going for none of Griffin’s pump fakes, Griffin ultimately off on his 17-foot fade-away jumper.
“It’s what you want, a Defensive Player of the Year candidate going against an MVP-level candidate,” Spoelstra said. “And that’s what the fans ultimately pay for and they want to see. You don’t see too many of those in today’s game, where it’s just mano y mano. And Griffin, he’s an MVP talent, the way he can put the ball on the floor, the way he can shoot, the way he can draw fouls.
“So when I’m watching, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, this is very similar to what we saw two nights ago.’ And Hassan had a crack at it, didn’t bail him out with a foul and was able to get a contest. And then you have to live with the results.”
Whiteside embraced the challenge.
“I just knew I had to slide and just make it as tough as possible,” he said. “Just slide and stay down on the pump fake.
“I might have cried if he would have made that, man, because of all the things that happened through the flow of the game.”
A pair of Richardson free throws later and the game was over, the Heat’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day not so bad, after all.
Whiteside led the Heat with 21 points and 17 rebounds, supported by 19 points from Tyler Johnson and 17 from Ellington.
Griffin led the Clippers with 23 points, with Clippers center DeAndre Jordan closing with 10 points and 19 rebounds.
The Heat had to alter their starting backcourt for the first time this season, with shooting guard Dion Waiters back in South Florida for the birth of his daughter. Waiters could re“When join the Heat as soon as tonight’s game against the Warriors, the third stop on this season-longest sixgame trip.
“Well, at least we’re rolling into an easy opponent,” Spoelstra deadpanned. “We get to enjoy this for what, 20 minutes?”