Forget draft edge: Focus on winning
Dave George
So the Miami Heat rattled offff a 13-game winning streak that was snapped Saturday night in Philadelphia. What’s the best thing that could happen now?
The obvious answer is start another winning streak. What, you allergic to winning?
The NBA, however, is a strange place at this time of year. Fans worry about their team wasting an opportunity at a lottery draft pick by stinking badly enough to miss the league’s wide postseason net but not going all the way to utterly rancid.
That’s where Miami stood entering play Monday night. Even after losing 107 to Orlando, they remain a couple of games back of what would be the eighth and fifinal playoffff spot in the Eastern Conference if the season ended today, which it almost never does.
You know they’re saying that the NBA draft pool is deeper and more talented than usual. They’re saying that qualifying for that fifinal playoffff spot doesn’t mean much once LeBron and the Cavs are fifin- MIAMI — After watching their 13-game winning streak end Saturday, the Heat are now in the middle of a losing streak.
Miami (24-32) just hopes it doesn’t last as long as its string of wins. The Heat dropped their second straight in a 116-107 loss to the Magic (21-36) on Monday night at AmericanAirlines Arena.
“It just shows you how tough this league is,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Every single night, it’s a challenge. There are a lot of teams that are bunched up. We didn’t play near our best defensive game, really the last t wo games we didn’t really get to our identity.”
The Heat overc ame a slow start; they trailed by as many as 14 points in the second quarter. Miami worked its way back into the game and even led by four points with 9:33 remaining in the fourth quarter.
But from there, the Magic outscored the Heat 27-14.
Dion Waiters scored 23 points and Goran Dragic had 22, with Waiters shooting 10 of 19 and Dragic 6 of 15 but making all 10 of his free throws.
James Johnson added 15 points offff the bench.
But Orlando’s balanced scoring was the winning formula. Six Magic players scored in double digits, led by 24 from Evan Fournier.
Here are our five takeaways from the game.
He a t d e f e n s e s t r u g g l e s : Strong defense was a constant during Miami’s 13-game winning streak. But the Heat struggled on that side of the court Monday, as the Magic scored 116 points on