Category: NBA Playoffs Blog

Suddenly, the road back to the Eastern Conference finals no longer looks daunting for Miami.

Not after the Heat left the Pacers beat up and banged up.

LeBron James scored 30 points, Dwyane Wade added 28, and the Heat moved a win away from the NBA’s final four with a 115-83 victory over the hurting Pacers on Tuesday night, a game where three flagrant fouls added more chapters to an already-physical series and Indiana watched starting forwards Danny Granger and David West leave with injuries.

”This is our challenge right now, to leave it behind us,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. ”A lot of good things tonight, but we have to focus on the next one.”

That would be Game 6 in Indiana on Thursday night. The Heat lead the best-of-seven East semifinals 3-2.

James added 10 rebounds and eight assists. Shane Battier scored 13 points, Mario Chalmers had eight points and 11 rebounds, and Udonis Haslem finished with 10 points for Miami, which never trailed, held a 22-2 edge in fast-break points and shot a franchise playoff-record 61 percent – best of any team in the playoffs this season.

Paul George scored 11 points for Indiana, with Granger and West adding 10 points apiece. Granger left with a sprained left ankle in the third quarter and departed the arena in a walking boot, while West departed with what the Pacers called a left knee sprain at the end of that period – something that West thought was born of a cheap shot…

A series marked by ugly moments had perhaps its worst with 19.4 seconds remaining when Miami reserve center Dexter Pittman went across the lane to send a forearm into the chin area of Indiana’s Lance Stephenson – who was caught on camera making a choke sign toward James during the Pacers’ Game 3 win, drawing the ire of the Miami locker room.

Pittman was caught on camera winking after the foul.

— Reported by Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press

Playing at a pace that minimized the advantage the Pacers held in the power rotation with center Roy Hibbert and power forward David West, the Heat got plenty of thrill-show theatrics from James and Wade on the fastbreak, with Wade clearly having regained the legs he lacked at the start of this series. The Heat outscored the Pacers 22-2 on fast breaks, while limiting them to .337 shooting.

“That’s a big key for us, when we’re able to make stops and get out on transition,” Wade said.

But this wasn’t only James and Wade, and there therefore was no need for James to repeat Sunday’s 40-point performance or for Wade to come up with something similar.

Instead, it was fill-in power forward Shane Battier, who again started in place of sidelined Chris Bosh, converting three first-quarter 3-pointers to set the tone, after entering 2 of 12 on 3-pointers in the series. He closed with 13 points.

— Reported by Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Hansbrough’s claw work marked the second game in a row the Pacers have bloodied a Heat player. In Game 4, Pacers reserve Lou Amundson gashed Haslem in the head with an elbow. The cut required stitches.

Apparently, Haslem had seen enough.

Less than a minute after Hansbrough’s flagrant foul on Wade, Haslem went after Hansbrough with what looked like a deliberate shot to the face. Hansbrough was in the act of shooting but it appeared Haslem worried little about trying to block the shot. Instead, he crushed Hansbrough with both arms.

Hansbrough’s head snapped back as he went to the ground. Haslem was whistled for a flagrant 1. From there, the Heat outscored the Pacers 83-58. After the game, Hansbrough said he wasn’t sure if Haslem’s foul was intentional.

— Reported by Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald

A cut opened above Wade’s right eye after Hansbrough attempted to block his shot and scraped Wade in the head. Hansbrough was assessed a flagrant-1 foul. Blood dribbled down Wade’s temple and left a stain on his white jersey as he shot free throws.

Indiana’s Danny Granger was prone twice after landing awkwardly on his ankle (the first time on James’ foot) and left the game for good in the third quarter.

Dexter Pittman jammed a blatant elbow into Lance Stephenson’s ribs as he drove the lane. Payback for Stephenson’s choke pantomime directed at James in Game 3? Juwan Howard had also lectured Stephenson before Game 4.

Haslem’s nine stitches were oozing. He took an elbow from Lou Amundson in Game 4. He said he wasn’t seeking revenge on Hansbrough.

— Reported by Linda Robertson of the Miami Herald

LeBron James scored 40 points with 18 rebounds and nine assists, and Dwyane Wade added 30 points – 22 in the second half – as Miami rallied to even their semifinal series against Indiana with a 101-93 win on Sunday over the Pacers, who had the defending Eastern Conference champions down couldn’t keep them there.

”I felt like I had to do whatever it took to win,” said James, who played all but four minutes.

With All-Star forward Chris Bosh injured and back in Florida, the James-Wade tag team saved the Heat, who will host Game 5 on Tuesday night at AmericanAirlines Arena.

”Me and ‘Bron had it going,” said Wade, who bounced back from the worst playoff game of his career – five points on 2-of-13 shooting – with one of his best, ”We played off of each other very well. We both were aggressive at the same time. That’s beautiful basketball for the Miami Heat when we play that way.” …

Udonis Haslem, playing with a large bandage covering a nasty cut over his right eye that required nine stitches, added 14 points for Miami…

Wade finished with nine rebounds and six assists, erasing the ugly memory of Game 3 when he also had a confrontation with Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, a public dispute that turned into a bigger deal than it probably was because of a two-day break between games. The next day, Wade, who has refused to blame injuries for his recent struggles, visited his former Marquette coach Tom Crean, who is now at Indiana…

Danny Granger scored 20 and Paul George 13 to lead the Pacers. Center Roy Hibbert, so dominant at both ends in Game 3, had just 10 points and was in foul trouble in the second half…

Miami also got a huge lift down the stretch from Haslem, who hasn’t been a factor in the series but made four big jumpers in the final six minutes despite having his head split by an elbow by Indiana’s Tyler Hansbrough.

— Reported by Tom Withers of the Associated Press

James: 40 points, 18 rebounds, nine assists, two blocked shots, two steals.

Wade: 30 points, nine rebounds, six assists, two blocked shots, one steal.

“Both of those guys knew they had to be actively involved,” coach Erik Spoelstra said.

James had 19 points at the intermission, when the Heat trailed 54-46. He was keeping them afloat.

Wade, by contrast, had opened 1 of 8, rekindling fears of a follow-up to his 2-of-13 performance in the Heat’s Game 3 loss.

But then the two did something they had not done much in this series, or to be honest, all that often in their two years as a dual-wing threat:

They choreographed something magical, playing in a lockstep so desperately needed with power forward Chris Bosh, the absentee of the Big Three, out indefinitely since sustaining a lower-abdominal strain in the first half of the series opener.

“Obviously, we’ve come a long way with that,” Spoelstra said. “We used to be a stand-and-watch-each-other team with those two guys.”

— Reported by Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The Heat trailed by 10 points when James delivered a difficult bucket with 3:07 left in the first quarter. From there, he scored nine points in a row to end the first period and then began the process of getting Wade involved in the action.

Just like Game 3, Wade was ice-cold in the first quarter. He failed to score the first 12 minutes just as he failed to score in the entire first half in Game 3. A well-timed assist from James helped change everything — the game’s momentum, Wade’s confidence and perhaps the entire series.

It came with 43.7 seconds left in the first half, a bounce pass from James to Wade on a back-door cut that finally set Wade’s mind at ease. Wade finished the play with a powerful baseline drive-and-dunk to cut the Pacers’ lead to five points.

“I told [James] at halftime that I needed that,” Wade said.

— Reported by Joseph Goodman of the Miami Herald