Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports
It wasn’t quite Allan Houston’s bounce at the buzzer, but watching Tony Parker‘s shot bouncing in as the shot clock turned red was just as bad. The only upside is that this loss to the San Antonio Spurs didn’t come at the end of a series — so unlike their loss to the New York Knicks, the Miami Heat actually have another game to live for.
“We know they’re going to come back very strong in Game 2,” Parker said via the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “We know we have a long, long way to go.”
Coming in strong wasn’t the problem though. It was the finish that killed Miami.
“We had some poor possessions,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra (via the South Florida Sun-Sentinel). “There were a couple of uncharacteristic turnovers, three of them in the fourth quarter. Uncharacteristic. And probably three or four possessions where we didn’t get organized where we typically get into, and the ball didn’t go where it needed to go.”
Their offensive execution was off to the point where you truly couldn’t tell if it was bad Miami offense or good San Antonio defense. After a while, it all seemed self-inflicted — and everything started to take too long. They even stopped attacking and turned passive, like they got excited too early. It gave me flashbacks of them blowing Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the Dallas Mavericks.
They were up the whole game then everything went downhill, and coach Spoelstra has to take some of the blame because there’s no way Dwyane Wade and LeBron James should have been on the bench for so long instead of going for the kill.
I guess I was wrong when I said the Heat wouldn’t have to be worried about anyone in the West.
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Richard Nurse is a Miami Heat columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @blackirishpr.
