"Nobody's afraid of the Miami Heat," he was quoted as saying Wednesday.
Them's fightin' words! Considering the Knicks had played Miami twice this season and lost both times, 113-91 at home on December 17th, and 106-98 in Miami 11 days later, it seemed interesting for him to call out the 31-13 Heat like that. Whatever his motives were, they worked.
New York bent but didn't break for 3 quarters and exploded in the 4th erasing a 9 point lead after 3 and outscoring the Heat 29-15 in the 4th quarter en route to a 93-88 win. Dwyane Wade had a stretch where he hit 13 consecutive shots, but finished the game with an 0/7 4th quarter and missed 8 of 14 free throws for the game. Lebron James played just a miserable game starting off by hitting just 4 of his first 21 shot attempts before converting 3 layups in the final minute and a half. The Knicks meanwhile hit just 6 of 29 3-pointers to start the game before getting 4 huge ones in the final 5:20, 2 apiece from Landry Fields and Danilo Gallinari to lead the Knicks to one of their biggest wins of the year. The first big three pointer, by Gallinari, gave the Knicks a 77-76 lead. Then after Lebron James hit a pair of free throws it was Fields' turn making it 80-78 with a big shot from the corner. A few minutes later Lebron James hit a driving layup to give the lead back to Miami 84-83 with just a minute and a half to go. Gallinari again stepped up and drilled a huge 3 with the assist coming from Fields to put the Knicks back up by two. Fields then pulled down a rebound following a James Jones miss and took a kickout pass from Amare Stoudemire on the other end and drilled another 3 putting the Knicks up 5 with under a minute to go, effectively winning the game for New York.
The Knicks ended up getting 20 points from Gallinari, 24 points and 8 rebounds from Stoudemire and 19 points 13 rebounds and 6 assists from Landry Fields (no wonder Spike Lee has his jersey). For the Heat it was Wade leading the way with 34 points and a career high 16 rebounds while James, despite his awful shooting, still finished with 24 points, 11 rebounds and 5 assists. The Heat had 11 different players appear in the game and 6 of them failed to produce a point producing this combined statline:
54 minutes 0/8 FG 0/4 3PT 9 Rebounds 2 Assists 5 Turnovers
That's not going to get it done. Joel Anthony was the only bench player who scored, finishing with 8 points. With the win the Knicks improve to 24-21 and are now winners of 2 straight following a 6 game losing streak. The Heat meanwhile lost for the 5th time in 6 games since the Lebron karma speech. Think they could've used Chris Bosh tonight? Here's another good stat to chew on. In 9 games the Heat have been in decided by 5 points or fewer, they've won just one, and that was the game they stole from the Wizards back in December then they erased a 4 point deficit in the final 18 seconds and pulled out a 95-94 win. If this is a team with championship aspirations, they're going to need to figure out how to win close games, and make people like Amare Stoudemire fear playing them.
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