Whiteside gives Heat too little, too late
MIAMI — White Hot is a fine postseason slogan. Whiteside, however, is what the Miami
Heat need more of against a high-scoring Philadelphia 76ers team that threatens to make this playoff run a one-and-done.
Hassan Whiteside, Pat Riley’s $98 million investment in the future, is going to have to give the franchise more for its money than he has so far.
This is nothing new, not the way the regular season ended, with Kelly Olynyk playing all the important minutes and Whiteside watching, sometimes grumpy and sometimes just confused, from the bench. It is, however, way past time to do something about it, because the Sixers have their own 7-footer, and he can do more in a clumsy mask than Whiteside can unfettered.
Joel Embiid didn’t play the first two games of this series, still recovering from a broken orbital bone, but he sure leaned into it Thursday night. Wrestling and pounding underneath the basket, he earned 15 free-throw attempts and made 10 of them. Oh, and when he took a break and drifted outside the 3-point line it was no better.
Embiid made 3 of 4 from long distance, contributing to Philly’s 52.9 percent team shoot-
ing percentage on 3-pointers, and there was no magical response from Dwyane Wade or anyone else this time around. The Sixers won 128-108 to take a 2-1 series lead, and that’s not even the worst part.
With this game and the Sixers’ 130-103 win in Game 1, Miami has now yielded the two highest point totals of its playoff history, and it’s not from lack of trying.
Goran Dragic was howling and flexing, even forcing a layup on the backboard and in while a defender was wrapping up the Heat guard’s arms in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the shot from even being attempted. Justise Winslow actually played like a first-round draft pick for a while, too, with 19 points and 10 rebounds.
Matter of fact, the Heat made some fine defensive plays, too, with nine blocked shots to only five for Embiid and his bunch.
So with Philly leading by just 96-94 with one quarter to go, the AmericanAirlines Arena sellout crowd jumped and stomped and stayed on its feet for some time, fully expecting a dynamite finish.
Unfortunately, it was a dud instead, with Miami scoring just 14 points in the final period. That’s when Whiteside got his only bucket of the game. Took his only shot of the game, too, and even then it was an alley-oop feed from Wade.
That’s more than too little too late. It’s too small a contribution to be seen. In about 13 minutes, Whiteside had twice as many fouls (4) as rebounds. The only way that makes sense is if Whiteside, too, was wearing a mask, With no eye holes..
Of course the momentum could reverse itself again in Saturday’s Game 4. The Heat and Sixers are so evenly matched that they split the four-game regular-season series. It’s a matter of matching a lava flow of Miami energy against Philly’s talent, however, because there are no predictable power surges from superstar players anymore.
It was that way in the Big Three’s first championship season of 2012. Indiana led the Heat 2-1 in an Eastern Conference semifinal and then Miami won the next three, getting, in order, 40 points from LeBron James, 30 points from LeBron and 31 from Wade.
It’s a different Heat team every night in 2018, which gives hope to Erik Spoelstra in some cases and drives other coaches crazy on a regular basis.
You figure, for instance, that it’s OK letting Tyler Johnson roam loose Thursday night, based on his limited playing time the first two games in this series, and he pops two 3-pointers in the opening minutes.
As for Winslow, the game plan says let him shoot all he wants from long range, right? So he zags when your zigging, hitting four of his first five 3-point tries and leading all scorers at halftime with 19 points.
Three times there were double technical fouls called to keep gum-flapping from escalating to jaw-popping.
As every longtime Miami fan knows, simultaneously buoyed and scarred by multiple postseason experiences, a series can turn surly in a hurry when playoff elimination is the price of playing nice.
This one has a long way to go, though, before we’re at the blood-and-guts level of those old Heat-Knicks sumo matches. For a time back then, counting the number of ejections was more vital than tracking the paltry number of points scored.
The Heat are far from finished, but in order for any of this to change Whiteside must at least get started.
Olynyk was signed and rookie Bam Adabayo was drafted to give the Heat’s Hercules some support, and not the other way around.