Heat 100 – Hawks 94: All we are saying, is give Beas a chance
It was a day where the Miami Heat lost two players to injury and one player possibly for good. But it was also a day where one Heat player broke through and came back from a dreadful slump to lead the way to victory over the Atlanta Hawks.
With knee problems being the culprit for Dorell Wright being inactive and Jermaine O’Neal leaving the game early as well as Rafer Alston going AWOL, the Heat desperately needed a lift to get past the troublesome Hawks. Quentin Richardson continued his surprising recent offensive surge with 22 points (including 5 three pointers) and Dwyane Wade was his typical brilliant self with 38 points and 10 assists, including a scorching 3rd quarter that included back-to-back 3 pointers and catching cross-court lob passes for breakaway opportunities.
But the night belonged to Michael Beasley who scored 14 points in the 4th quarter including seven points in a row near the end that swung a Heat deficit into a lead that they never relinquished. But his contributions weren’t limited to just offense. Back-to-back steals and deflections on two straight Hawks possessions along with some solid defending on Josh Smith were crucial in preserving the Heat lead.
With Beasley getting zero minutes in the 4th quarter in the last several Heat games and being limited all season long at crunch time by Erik Spoelstra in favor of steady veteran Udonis Haslem, he most assuredly would not have been called upon if it wasn’t for O’Neal’s injury. It’s one thing if the Heat were a contending team with a solid rotation that had no late-game minutes for a second-year player still honing his NBA game. But for a team starving for buckets late in games when the opposing team’s only focus is to stop Wade, it’s just plain bizarre for Spoelstra to stubbornly stick to this plan all season long. The only way Beasley is going to reach his potential is to actually be in the game when it matters most instead of watching from the bench.
The Heat made a lot of progress in the playoff hunt with this victory. It took the season series from last year’s first round playoff nemesis Atlanta 3-1 with three straight victories. The Heat are also now only 3 games back in the loss column from 5th seeded Toronto who have lost 4 of 5 games and leapfrogged a slumping Bulls team who have lost 4 straight games.
It was imperative for the Heat to defend their home court with this favorable schedule and they responded with three straight victories to lift their record at the American Airlines Arena to 17-14. Now it’s time to avenge some ugly Charlotte Bobcat losses.
5 comments
This is what Miami Heat has to do: to defend its home court in the next games, this is very important, and an indispensable chance to be near the 5th possition before playoffs. Now it’s time to beat Bobcats and break 2 losses in a row with a relative easy team. We will wait for the final Heat’s expossion. And for ending, I don’t know, but i think Miami onlyplays with intensity with the best teams…
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Every fan to a bad to sub-par team says “we’re better than what our record is.” For the Heat, we truly are better than what our record indicates. We play up to the competition (Lakers, Hawks,Celtics, Cavs,Magic), as well as play down to it (Warriors, Nets). It’s annoying whenever watching a close game on TNT or ESPN and the commentators say something like “Why have the [insert good team here] let the Heat stay in this game; they’re a .500 team!”
Oh, and yeah, Spoelstra’s gonna catch Hell for not playing Beasley in the 4th for most of the season. Slightly to his defense, it was looking like another dismal Beasley performance until Dwade punched him in the chest.
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Surya Fernandez Reply:
March 8th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Joe,
1) Why exactly do you consider the Heat to be “truly better” than what our record indicates? I agree that they’re not exactly a sub-par team, but a sub-par team has a record around .300 or .400 (Knicks, Pacers, Warriors) whereas a decent team wins about as many games as they lose (Bulls, Bobcats, Grizzlies). I personally don’t put the Heat in the next class of teams like the Thunder or even the Hawks themselves. But we’ll always have a fighting chance with a healthy Wade and a consistent Beasley.
2) There’s no defense for Spo. He was forced to put Beasley back in the 4th. We wouldn’t have known if he was going to have a dismal performance at the end of the game because he rarely has a chance to either dispel that notion or prove it.
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Kurt Reply:
March 9th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Joe is right..
the heat are better than there record says they are. the heat should of beat the lakers and celtics twice, beat the hawks 3-1, and also beat orlando twice. not to mention, played 2 great games vs. the cavs…everyone will remember Dwades dunk over Varejao for the next 10 years. but back to their record, the heat will play with great energy agaiast the elite teams but then only beat the Nets by 1. so as u can see, if the heat played half of what they can do against the lakers, celtics, and orlando all the time…they would be in the race for the 4th or even 3rd seed instead of 5th-9th
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Matthew Bunch Reply:
March 10th, 2010 at 12:11 am
Kurt, if my mom had wheels she’d be a bicycle. I’m playing the Charlotte result here a bit, but I would have said the same thing before. This is an average team whose talent is highly concentrated into a few players. Therefore, when those players excel, they can hang with anyone. But when those players are mediocre, they can lose to anyone. Their record is just about where it should be: right around .500 with a big mix of inexplicable wins and losses. Miami could absolutely shock the world and win a first-round playoff series. They could also fail to make the playoffs at all. Such is the life of the Heat.
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