With the series clinching well within sight – sitting right in front of them in fact – the Heat went through their final Madison Square Garden shootaround of the season yesterday afternoon.
And the mood around the Heat, beginning with Pat Riley and ending with Alonzo Mourning, was one of surly, tough-guy defiance.
Riley and Mourning and several players in between, including the usually chatty P.J. Brown, were in a dour, let’s-get-this-thing-over-with mood.
“It’s been three weeks,” Mourning said when finally cornered by a handful of TV cameras and reporters. “Ain’t nothing else to talk about. We got a game to play man and we’re going to try to close this thing out. There ain’t too much more to talk about, man.
“What else do you all need me to answer? You all want me to respond to something they said or something? No. No more to talk about. We got a big game and we’re going to try to close it out.
“We got to play the best we can. Can’t make any mistakes. We got to come out here and come right – rebound the ball well, get back on defense, can’t turn the ball over. We got to have a good game.”0>
The Mourning interview ended abruptly when a TV reporter asked him what he thought about Patrick Ewing’s shouting match with Chris Childs in Game 5.
“Oh, man, I don’t give a [bleep],” he said as he quickly walked away.
Even Riley got testy when a reporter asked him what he could do to keep his players from thinking about their recent history of choking in critical series games against the Knicks.
“Enough is enough,” Riley said after a long pause. “Any other questions?”
The Knicks, of course, have closed the Heat out in decisive games in Miami the last two years, and a win last night would likely shift the pressure to the Heat players.
“We’re not worried,” Riley said. “We’re coming here to play and close this thing out. Our mindset is to win. We’re thinking positively, not thinking about all this psychological bull (bleep). The seeds have been planted and now it’s time to win.
“Every one of these games has been close, so we have to stay the course and win, move on to the next round. If we win, it’ll be because we played a good, solid game. We want to win and move on. This is a big game for us.”