Defense Helps Heat Rally Past Pistons

By Chris Joseph Thu., Mar. 24 2011 at 9:23 AM

Categories: Sports

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There are nights when the Miami Heat completely annihilate an inferior opponent and leave them buried in their wake of awesomeness by twenty or thirty points. Last night was not one of those nights.

The Heat had to rally hard and overcome an eleven-point deficit in last night's 100-94 win over the lowly Detroit Pistons. At this point, it's almost as if the Heat are content to stay in the third seed in the East. How else would you explain such a sluggish performance? The Detroit nightlife? Pfft!

For the first three quarters, Miamit played slow, sluggish basketball, allowing the Pistons to build an eleven-point lead, and allowing a Detroit crowd that seemed to be just a bunch of people who wandered into the arena to get into the game.

But then the Heat said that's enough already with all this shittiness and went into cock- punching mode with some stifling defense and well timed-threes.

With the Heat down 81-72, Mike Miller hit a 3-pointer in the final seconds of the third quarter that spurred Miami to have a ball crushing fourth. The Heat then proceeded to go on a 15-0 run to start the final quarter. But, more importantly, Mike Miller hit a 3-pointer!

Miami outscored Detroit 27-13 in the fourth, while their defense limited the Pistons to just 4-of-19 shooting the rest of the way.

Dwyane Wade led all scorers with 24, while Chris Bosh scored 23. LeBron James added 19 with 8 rebounds and 7 assists.

Of bigger note, however, was the combined 26 points scored by Miller, James Jones and Eddie House (playoff note for the Heat: good things happen when the other guys score a lot of points!)

The win puts the Heat at two and a half games behind Chicago for the one-seed in the East.

Meanwhile, the Celtics lost to the Memphis Grizzlies last night, which puts Miami just a game and a half behind Boston for the two-seed, causing Celtics fans everywhere to exclaim, "Tha C's lawst to tha piss poah Grizzlies? Whatevah! Let's go Sawx!"

The Heat host the 76ers on Friday.

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