MIAMI — The Nets and Heat spent the 48 hours leading up to the start of their Eastern Conference semifinal Tuesday night downplaying the importance of Brooklyn sweeping all four games from Miami during the regular season.
After the first 48 minutes of this series, it was easy to see why, as the Heat pulled away in the second half to claim a 107-86 victory and take a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.
“If you’re a competitor, and you keep hearing that over and over, and you’ve got time to rest and sit back and watch a team and continue to hear that, the competitive juices are going to meet that,” Kevin Garnett said.
“With that kind of being gasoline on the fire, they came out, they won at home like they were supposed to, and now it’s our job to steal one in Game 2.”
The Heat earned the win by spending the game in one long, continuous parade to the basket, converting bucket after bucket inside as the Nets offered little resistance. The Heat were clearly more aggressive than they were during the regular season and, all told, they outscored the Nets 52-28 in the paint, where Miami had nearly as many field goals (26) as the Nets had attempts (28).
“It just came down to defense tonight,” Deron Williams said. “Our defensive game plan wasn’t executed at all.
“The theme of the night was layups, layups, layups.”
LeBron James led the Heat with 22 points as Miami executed its offense to near perfection from start to finish, shooting 57 percent from the floor. While the Nets came into the series talking about how their depth would be enough to counter the star power of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, it was the Heat’s depth that made the difference, as they used a 15-2 run midway through the third quarter to break the game open.
Miami finished with five players in double-figures — including 19 points off the bench from Ray Allen, who far out-produced his former Celtics teammates Paul Pierce (eight points) and Kevin Garnett (no points and four rebounds in 16 minutes). Meanwhile the Nets struggled to get any consistent play from anyone on their bench and failed to find any sustained attack at the basket, leaving them to take too many long, contested jump shots.
That, in turn, kept the Nets from getting to the foul line, with only Shaun Livingston getting to the foul line among the starting five — and he went only 1-for-2.
“Easy. You attack,” Garnett said when asked how to get more action near the basket. “Obviously they have some holes in their defense that we can probably compromise.
“I’m saying [playing with] more confidence, being more aggressive, putting them on their heels. I think Shaun was the only starter who went to the foul line. We can’t have that.”
Then there was the matter of turnovers — at both ends of the floor. Priding themselves on becoming a team that turned their opponents over defensively and protected the ball offensively after switching to their small-ball lineup, the Nets failed to do both in Game 1, forcing only 10 turnovers and committing 13 themselves.
“I think we just mentally were a little sluggish, as far as what we were trying to execute offensively, and especially defensively” Livingston said.
Now the Nets will spend the next two days figuring out what adjustments they’ll need to make in order to steal Game 2 and even the series before the series heads back to Brooklyn this weekend.
After the Nets, coming off a grueling seven-game series with the Raptors, trailed only 55-52 at halftime despite an uneven performance against the well rested Heat, Pierce refused to panic about the result of one game.
“Not at all,” he said. “I mean, look, we [are] talking about the third quarter. It was a three-point game at the half, fellas. … We’re not overreacting.
“We feel like we still can get a game in this building.”