Heat Take Down Magic in Home Opener

By Chris Joseph Sat., Oct. 30 2010 at 12:00 AM

Categories: Sports

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How do you respond when one of your biggest rivals calls you a lap dog, arrogant and questions your competitiveness? By completely smashing them in the face with your awesomeness and beating the crap out of them by 26 points. That's one way to go about it. And, coincidentally enough, that's the route the Miami Heat decided to take last night when they took down the mouthy Orlando Magic in a 96-76 beat down at a packed American Airlines Arena.

Dwyane Wade led all scorers with 26 points, while LeBron James added 15 points with 7 assists. After a rather lethargic first half that featured eight lead changes, the Heat came out and decided to kick it into "Nail The Whole World In The Ocular Cavity" mode and absolutely ripped into Orlando with a 14-0 run to start the second half.

At one point, earlier in the game, Wade and LeBron connected on a spectacular alley-oop that was started by a Chris Bosh defensive rebound. Bosh passed the ball to James, who flung it from near mid-court into the hands of an airborne D-Wade, who proceeded to flush it down with authority.

The Heat's second half fury was kicked off by James hitting a three-pointer, and then Wade following with two more triples, all in the span of less than a minute. The duo ended the night with a combined 41 points and 10 assists, while also setting the tone by playing stifling defense.

But this wasn't supposed to work! These are two alpha-dogs who always command the ball! LeBron James is better than Dwyane Wade! How will Wade ever cope? The Heat are doomed!

These are ESPN's Bill Simmons' theories, anyway. He wrote that the Heat are basically a dead-team walking. He bases this solely on the fact that they had frowny faces on Tuesday night in Boston.

On Friday, the Heat shut down a powerful Magic lineup that was coming off a 29-point win over Washington the night before. The Heat have now outscored their opponents 86-41 in the third quarter through the season's first three games. James and Wade look every bit the two-headed monster everyone feared they would be. No, scratch that. They actually don't. They still have work to do. There's still much room for improvement. There's still seventy-nine more games to go. Also, Chris Bosh is yet to get things going.

Any other theories there, Sports Guy?

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