That’s how Dwyane Wade characterized
Joe Johnson after the latter’s acquisition.
Perfect for
this team, at that time.
“He’s a smart
player,” Wade said then. “You come here, you see how our offense is, that there
are guys on this team that have scored in the 20s, but the mentality is for it
to be an even kind of offense. Once you see that, you know some nights it’s
going to be your night, and some nights it’s going to be someone else’s.”
Late Tuesday,
after the Heat played a most imperfect game, but managed to beat the Detroit
Pistons, 99-93, Wade was reminded of those earlier sentiments.
He smiled.
“I’m glad
this was one of his nights,” Wade said.
That’s
because this wasn’t just any night. It was a night the Heat needed, to inch up
the Eastern Conference standings, to ensure that Wednesday’s season finale in
Boston would be an opportunity to secure the No. 3 seed. It was a night that
Miami often got stuck in the grime, playing a Pistons team that was without its
leading scorer (point guard Reggie Jackson) but not without absent motivation,
trying to avoid an eighth seed and a first round matchup with the Cleveland
Cavaliers.
It was a
night on which the Heat committed 11 first half turnovers, and 21 fouls in
total, with Hassan Whiteside struggling to keep Andre Drummond off the boards
and Goran Dragic struggling to stay on the court, somehow the one caught up in
foul trouble even as he was losing a tooth to an elbow without penalty.
“We worked
hard tonight,” Dragic said. “It was not smooth, everybody knows that. But it’s
a win we needed. Detroit is a playoff team, it is not easy to beat them at
home. But we did it.”
It wasn’t
clear if they would, not on a night in which Wade’s play was uneven, and the
score was even 19 different times, including with 10:23 left, with the Heat
leading by just one when Johnson replaced Wade with 6:14 remaining.
This was
Johnson’s night from that point forward. The 15-year veteran scored 15 of his
25 points in a five-minute spree, starting with a 27-footer just before the
shot clock expired.
Erik
Spoelstra didn’t tell Johnson to do anything; he didn’t need to. He just kept
running actions for the seven-time All-Star.
“I was just
being aggressive, man,” Johnson said. “It wasn’t me just stepping up trying to
give us that oompf. But I was taking what the defense gave me. I was running
pick-and-rolls and the big was off, so we were trying to put them in a tough
spot. I was able to get a couple of floaters in the lane, a couple of jump
shots went, and we just fed off that.”
They all did,
even if it might have hurt Dragic (16 points in 26 minutes) to chew.
“We’re 2-0
when I lose a tooth,” he said, with a gap-toothed smile, having lost the same
replacement tooth as in Atlanta earlier this season.
He won’t fix
it yet.
There’s no
time, not with a flight to Massachusetts, and then a game Wednesday night to
close the regular season.
“Everything
is in our hands,” Dragic said. “If we win the game, we’re the third seed.”
Dragic is
accurate, of course; he’s been carefully following schedules and scenarios for
weeks. If the Heat loses, it still can be third, if Atlanta loses in Washington.
But the Heat also can fall to fifth or even sixth, due to a number of
convoluted scenarios. And it could still play either Boston, Atlanta or
Charlotte in the first round.
But the win
in Detroit increased the chances of making this easy. Of making up for
everything that happened to this team this season. An hour prior to Tuesday’s
tipoff, as Dragic and Amare Stoudemire were reviewing the ramifications of the
final two regular season games, they revealed some regrets.
“That Lakers
game,” Dragic said, shaking his head.
“Yeah,”
Stoudemire said.
That Lakers
game. That Nets game. That Knicks game. That Timberwolves game. That Magic
game.
Yet none of
those squandered games matter now.
They are all
just rough water under the bridge to the postseason, to the third seed.
That bridge
is in Boston.
Perhaps, once
again, it will be the perfect time to ride Joe Johnson.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario