96 Heat 80 Lakers
What a perfect way to end a very Merry Christmas!! The HEAT WON!!! The Lakers fans gotta feel pretty stupid, but not as bad as Cleveland.. Haaaaaaaaa
By halfway through the fourth quarter, even the pretty people in the premium seats lost patience. Don't throw good money after bad? Well, there's no sense in wasting any more quality holiday time on a disappointing performance by the home team, even if you paid big bucks to see it. And as many of the celebrities started heading for the Staples Center exits, some of the Lakers fans who stuck around began to boo, if only slightly more passionately than their team had played.
This is what the new-look Heat did to the old-guard Lakers on Christmas.
And let's be clear: the Heat did it.
"We made it tough on them," Chris Bosh said.
"We really got to our identity," coach Erik Spoelstra said.
The Heat got the better of the Lakers with defensive intensity and offensive trust, pretty much from start to finish, in a 96-80 victory. It got the better of the Lakers in every major category, from shooting percentage to turnovers and even, in a surprise considering the size of the hosts, rebounding - if only by one. It got better play from its best players, with a cold-shooting, sore-kneed Dwyane Wade still playing Kobe Bryant to a draw, Bosh turning in a far more efficient performance than Pau Gasol and LeBron James outdoing a decent effort from Lamar Odom by posting the first triple-double on Christmas in 40 years.
"We're happy because we got better today," said James, who made 5-of-6 three-pointers on his way to 27 points, "and we didn't take a step back."
Rather, the Heat took a step forward, by stepping on the two-time defending champions, and never stepping off.
It's necessary to state all of this early, and often, because it was plain in the post-game press conferences how this will be widely portrayed: that the Lakers simply aren't the Lakers right now, and so it's no great feat to take them apart, not at this time, and certainly not on this day.
As a seething Bryant put it, after scoring just 17 points on 6-of-16 shooting, "We always suck on Christmas. They should just take us off this game."
Or, in the words of Phil Jackson, "No surprise to us as a coaching staff. We're just not playing very good ball."
That may be so.
A title defense can be a chore, and a bore, and the Lakers don't seem all that intense of late.
The Heat, however, has been playing well for a month, since that third-quarter meltdown against Dallas, so this performance was coming.
Miami has won 14 of 15 overall but hasn't gotten much credit for it, mostly because of the questionable competition. The only loss came against the only inarguably elite squad (Dallas), with the most impressive wins coming at Utah, at New York and at Cleveland, the latter significant more because of what the Heat faced from the crowd than on the floor.
This win now jumps to the front of the list. In the days preceding, Heat players downplayed the significance, with James rightly noting that a rout against the Lakers last Christmas, while with Cleveland, didn't stop Los Angeles from winning the big prize in June. But this did mean something, for a team still in the building stage, with 50 games to go before the playoffs.
"They're playing better basketball than we are," Bryant said. "They're playing as a unit, they're playing with a sense of urgency, they're executing extremely well. They're doing everything that we're not doing."
You can see the Heat building an identity.
"Our backbone right now is our defense," Bosh said. "We know what we're good at."
Wade added: "It's five guys, all being on one string, at one time together. That's what we did tonight."
And you can see it building trust.
You can see Bosh, who hasn't had a clunker in a month, building trust in himself, and his place in the offense. He wasn't just shooting his pick-and-pop jumper Saturday. He was driving to the basket, scoring inside. He had 18 by halftime, and 24 at the end.
"He's found his niche," Wade said, laughing. "He ain't passing. He found all he's got to do is score, and rebound the ball."
You can see players building trust in each other.
"We haven't been trying to self-will things," Wade said.
You can see players building trust in a coach and his priorities. During the past few weeks, nobody's made any comments about Spoelstra that can be dissected, and perceived as dissension. Rather, players have begun parroting the coach's principles. James has repeatedly spoken, and did again Saturday, about how Spoelstra has asked for only one thing - something he also views as essential:
"Play defense ... and you can run what you want to run."
Saturday, the Heat looked like a team the Lakers might not want to run into in June.
For Media Notes on the HEAT click here.
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