The Heat was on… and the Hornets were turned off.
The Miami Heat profoundly struggled with the Charlotte Hornets over the past four games of their Eastern Conference first-round series, but when Dwyane Wade saved them in Game 6 on Friday night, a week of frustration gave way to a different mood and attitude.
This is the eternally fascinating aspect of a Game 7, in any sport: For some, the pressure of the moment becomes suffocating, an inhibitor of performance. For others, the enormity of the spotlight serves as a catalyst for excellence. The presence of a Game 7 means that six previous collisions did not decide the series; the principals and the peripherals convene one last time, having carried very different workloads to get to the concluding stage of a two-week tussle.
Which players rise in a Game 7? Which players fall? Does the home team derive an advantage, or does it tighten up precisely because of the nervous human energy in the seats? Does the road team play fearlessly, or does it shrivel in the face of an inspired charge from the revved-up locals?
All these Game 7 questions — never irrelevant to the great crucible of professional sports — were answered rather clearly on Sunday afternoon in Miami. The Heat found all the right answers and played at the level they expected from themselves. The Charlotte Hornets crumbled after so magnificently changing this series over the previous week.
When Miami shot over 57 percent in each of the first two games and roared to a 2-0 series lead, a Charlotte team without a healthy Nic Batum was believed by many to be dead in the water. That the Hornets earned two cracks at eliminating the Heat — the product of a three-game winning streak in this series — was an achievement unto itself. However, when they didn’t close the sale in Game 6, they set the stage for their ultimate demise.
The video you see above was Goran Dragic’s most substantial playoff moment, entering Sunday’s Game 7 against Charlotte. Dragic breathed fire and made it rain on the San Antonio Spurs in a dazzling fourth quarter, ensuring that the Suns would not fall victim to the wiles of Gregg Popovich, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili. That series — the 2010 Western Conference semifinals — marked the end of the first half of the Spurs’ era as we have known it. The next season, the Spurs made the fundamental identity change from a defense-first team to an offense first team.
Goran Dragic helped bring about that transition. In the process, he lifted the Phoenix Suns to their most recent Western Conference Finals appearance.
Now, Dragic has a second special playoff memory to cherish, after he rose above the fray to score 25 points on 11-of-17 shooting in Game 7:
https://twitter.com/SportsonEarth/status/726836467486609409
Dragic became the MVP for the Heat in this winner-take-all battle. He might have labored for most of the past week, but he did score several points in the third quarter of Game 6. Dragic served as a bridge between the Heat’s 59-point first half and D-Wade’s flurry of cold-blooded buckets in the final minutes.
Without Dragic, the Heat wouldn’t have escaped Game 6. Without the liberated player who finally got his groove back in Game 7, the Heat wouldn’t be awaiting the Toronto Raptors or the Indiana Pacers in the second round on Tuesday.
That’s the timelessly fascinating aspect of a Game 7: In a one-game crapshoot, no one knows if a player who lurked in the background for most of the series will suddenly play with freedom, or if a team’s utterly dependable rock will just as abruptly falter after carrying the weight of the primary scoring burden for the previous 12 days.
The Heat received the best of Dragic. On the other side of the equation, Charlotte star Kemba Walker — whose 37 points could have ended the series in Game 6 if Wade hadn’t served up some Miami #ONIONS with Cuban pork — ran on empty. Kemba carried his team through this series and the season, but in the one-shot world of a Game 7, he hit just 3 of 16 shots with three turnovers.
Season over for Charlotte, a team which overachieved all the way — from Game 1 through Game 82, and in this series as well.
Such is the organism that is a Game 7, an eternally frail and fragile beast.
Miami won a crapshoot, yes, but from that victory comes an important and impressive reminder:
You don’t have to score a bunch to be the most valuable player on your team.
Dragic captured Game 7 and stitched together the Heat’s offense in the second half of Game 6, but the MVP for the Heat in this series is the man who posted a modest 5-of-11, 12-point scoreline on Sunday:
Here's Dwyane Wade during the national anthem. Don't think this didn't mean anything to him. pic.twitter.com/jTOeGoSFQa
— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) May 1, 2016
The Miami Heat had Dwyane Wade. The Charlotte Hornets didn’t. This doesn’t mean the Hornets lacked a player with Wade’s skill set or his defensive capability; the emphasis here is on the fact that Charlotte didn’t have a player who could call upon such a rich vein of playoff experience — elimination game experience, Game 7 experience — as Wade could.
This stat speaks for itself, does it not?
Dwyane Wade has played in 29 playoff series. The Heat are about to go 22-7 in those.
— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) May 1, 2016
This stat — pertaining to Wade’s head coach since Pat Riley retired — also speaks for itself… and it needs to add one more win to each of the two records presented:
This from the Heat: under Spoelstra, Heat are 15-5 under him w/ other team on brink of elimination, 8-4 when Heat are on brink.
— Ethan J. Skolnick, 5 Reasons Sports (@EthanJSkolnick) May 1, 2016
After a night game on Friday, the early tip on Sunday presented a short turnaround. Wade — getting on in years — did not figure to be a big scorer in Game 7. Josh Richardson, an important 3-point threat for the Heat, played 19 minutes with an injured shoulder. He was not expected to score much in this game, and he didn’t — he made just one shot the entire afternoon.
Given these limitations, the Heat had to be great on defense. You need a healthy shoulder to hit threes, but you don’t have to have a fully healthy body to play wing defense if your movement is fine.
Richardson and Wade and Justise Winslow (who scored just five points himself and didn’t sustain a comfort zone on offense as this series moved along) didn’t have to score — they defended at a high level.
Don’t doubt for a second that the influence and input of Wade, and of “temporary (improvised) assistant coach” Chris Bosh, didn’t play a part in enabling the Heat’s rookies to shine at the defensive end of the floor. While Dragic scored in bunches, the role players and young buck Hassan Whiteside all brought their best on defense. That’s a credit to them, but it’s also a product of having a battle-tested leader such as Dwyane Wade in their corner.
The Heat — as soon as they survived Game 6 on the road in Charlotte — had to face the quick turnaround for Game 7 on Sunday afternoon. Dwyane Wade, an old man in basketball terms, could have allowed logistics to compromise his and his team’s performance. Instead, he led with his voice and his defense, while the man who is becoming the D-Wade of 2006 — Kemba Walker — wasn’t able to offer much of anything.
The old dog showed his young rival some playoff tricks, reminding Kemba that while the future might belong to the Hornets, the present moment very much belongs to the Heat, safely into the harbor of the second round of the playoffs.
