The Miami Heat’s Joe Johnson, right, drives to the basket against the Charlotte Hornets’ Cody Zeller and Nicolas Batum in the third quarter during Game 2 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals at AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami on Wednesday, April 20, 2016.
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Charlotte’s return to the postseason has not gone exactly according to plan.
The Hornets are down 2-0 in their first-round series against the Miami Heat, and they’ve surrendered a total of 238 points in those two games.
The same Charlotte team that charged back from a 23-point deficit against the Spurs on March 21 looked far from that in Game 2 against the Heat.
“Let’s just see what happens when we get to Charlotte”, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
Center Hassan Whiteside also had a masterful performance for Miami, tallying 17 points, 13 rebounds, one assist, one steal, with two rejections.
Five different Miami players scored 15 or more points, led by Dwyane Wade’s 28.
The Hornets were able to keep up with the Heat early, coming out of the first quarter tied at 29. Game 3 will take place at 5:30 p.m. E.T. on TNT.
The most prolific part of the night was the final few minutes of the first half for Miami as the team kept making nearly every shot they took. After the Heats’ staggeringly impressive shooting night in game one, Hornets coach Steve Clifford made adjustments, hoping that Miami was made up of mere mortals. Deron Williams, battling a sports hernia, sat out Game 3 and his status for Saturday night remains uncertain.
Clifford ripped his team’s defense after Game 1 – a 123-91 Miami win – saying Charlotte got “manhandled” and that the defense was “terrible” and “disorganized”. – Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports/Reuters picThe 20 three-pointers were more than the Cavs made in any game during the regular season and made them the fourth team to hit 20 in a playoff game.
The Heat have never relinquished a 2-0 series lead in franchise history (13-0).
While some, if not all of those numbers are certainly unsustainable and it’s only just a two game sample size, how the Heat’s offense is scoring at an incredibly high rate is nothing new from what they’ve been doing since mid-February.
“I think our offense has been overshadowing the defense”, 20-year-old rookie Justise Winslow said. “We can’t expect to take this same offensive game on the road”, Wade told reporters. What the Hornets haven’t done all week is stop a Miami team scoring at such a torrid pace that even LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade weren’t able to sustain these kinds of numbers in the days of the Big Three. Miami had nine fouls to Charlotte’s two, the Heat had all six of the turnovers in the period and the Hornets had a 14-1 edge from the free-throw attempts in the opening 12 minutes.
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If you’re curious about Charlotte’s points per possession, the Hornets were at 1.05 during the regular season.
