Every morning, we will give you five things from the night before in the NBA to start your day.
1: Heat get hot
The Miami Heat are affectionately known as the Flying Death Machine on the Twitter-verse. Simply because when the Heat are at their best, they come at you from all sides at blazing speed and ability to turn on the scoring jets at will.
That is what the kind of talent the Heat have will get you.
The Cavaliers found that out the hard way in a 110-108 loss to the Heat at American Airlines Arena.
Cleveland did not put Miami away when it had the chance. The Cavaliers hit 14 of 31 3-pointers and seemed to have control. But the Heat scored the final eight points of the game and got a couple of big 3-pointers from Ray Allen in a 31-point fourth quarter as the Heat came from behind to secure the win.
Cleveland is learning the hard way on this Florida road trip just how difficult it is to close games out. The Cavaliers allowed the Magic to say in the game thanks to some hot 3-point shooting despite 16 turnovers in the first half of that game. Cleveland could not execute down the stretch and ended up losing the game by four.
Against Miami, it was poor late-game execution again as Allen, who scored 17 points and hit three 3-pointers, hit a couple of big shots at the end to make sure Miami remained unbeaten at home.
2: Raining and Pouring
The Washington Wizards had to believe that this was their night. At some point, it had to be pretty clear that the opportunity for the first win of the season was right there for the taking.
Alas, even double overtime against the Bobcats was not enough for the Wizards to secure a win.
Reggie Williams gave Charlotte the lead for good in the double overtime period with a 3-pointer with about a minute to play. Washington simply did not have the guns to keep up with Charlotte.
Bradley Beal was Washington's only starter to score in double figures with 13 points. The Wizards got a good contribution from Martell Webster (21 points), Chris Singleton (13 points, 3/11 FGs) and Nene (19 points).
Something though is not working. The Bobcats continued their hot streak in getting the win, bouncing back from the loss to Atlanta on Friday night. The Bobcats got a poor game game from sophomore Kemba Walker with 12 points on 3-for-17 shooting, his first game with fewer than 16 points this season. Byron Mullens picked up the slack with 27 points for Charlotte.
3: HIGHLIGHTS!!!
Nikola Pekovic meets Harrison Barnes
The Calm before Demarcus Cousins' storm
Russell Westbrook splits and slams
4: Line of the Night: Carlos Boozer — 22 points, 19 rebounds
Life is still a bit of a struggle for the Bulls without Derrick Rose. Relying on Carlos Boozer and Luol Deng to pick up that slack can be inconsistent. There was nothing inconsistent with the game Boozer put in with a 93-86 win over the Bucks on Saturday.
5: You can quote me on that
He got some oatmeal this morning and I said, 'Nice choice.'
"Pau's a great guy. I wasn't trying to disrespect him," D'Antoni said before Saturday's game. "Pau's a great player and he always will be a great player, so we'll keep tinkering and working.
"We've got to figure out how to get him more involved. Not just him, how to get Dwight more involved. We can't have our big guys just shooting four, five or six times.
–Mike D'Antoni on Pau Gasol bouncing back in the Lakers win over the Mavericks
Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. That's all I can say about that.
–Thunder guard Kevin Martin on his 1-for-8 shooting performance
