The Miami Heat spent last summer finding new faces to add to its roster. It used the early part of the season to make a coaching change. It spent the past six months working to make everything jell.
This tinkering was done with one major purpose in mind -- to avenge last year's loss to the Detroit Pistons in the Eastern Conference finals.
The Heat served notice on Tuesday night that its formula for dethroning the Pistons, the two-time defending conference champions, might be the right one.
PHOTO: AFP
Miami turned to its role players to offset the foul trouble of Dwyane Wade and Shaquille ONeal and won Game 1 of this conference finals rematch 91-86 to steal home-court advantage from the Pistons.
Wade led the Heat with 25 points, but he played only 26 minutes 43 seconds because of foul trouble. O'Neal scored 14 points in 29:10.
But the Heat, which had three other players in double figures, shot 56.3 percent from the field, compared with the Pistons' 37.8 percent. Richard Hamilton led Detroit with 22 points, but he shot 9 for 22.
"That's what it's going to take," O'Neal said, "a total team effort to beat this great Detroit team."
The Heat proved its mettle during two stretches, while Wade and O'Neal were on the bench.
The first came in the final five minutes of the first half, when the Heat outscored the Pistons by a point. The second was a 5-minute-15-second span that began at the end of the third quarter. Miami outscored Detroit by nine points in that stretch.
For several of the Heat's new faces, like Gary Payton and Antoine Walker, this is their chance to show that the highly scrutinized roster moves made last summer by Pat Riley, the coach and team president, were not in vain.
"That's what he brought us here for," said Payton, who had 14 points off the bench Tuesday. "He brought us to get over the hump, win the finals, get the championship."
Game 2 is Thursday night and the Heat still has a long way to go before it can hoist the Larry O'Brien trophy. But the Heat players were so poised at times that they appeared to be making easy work of the Pistons, who finished the regular season with the best record in the NBA.
Detroit was seemingly plagued by the same shooting woes that nearly led to its demise against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the conference semifinals.
The Pistons might have been nursing tired legs after finishing a grueling seven-game series against the Cavaliers 48 hours earlier.
"I didn't think we had consistent energy or didn't totally play with the edge we played with the last two games," Pistons coach Flip Saunders said.
The Pistons missed their first six shots Tuesday, and the Heat took an 11-0 lead.
The Pistons' one bright moment on offense came early in the second half. They went on a 12-2 run and when Chauncey Billups made a driving layup with 6:56 left in the third quarter, they took their first lead, 56-54.
Perhaps more damaging to the Heat than the Pistons' spurt was Wade's picking up his fourth foul; he went to the bench with 7:14 to play in the period.
But with Wade, their most explosive player, on the bench, the Heat's role players continued to prove that they could make things happen.
After the Pistons stretched their lead to five points on a jumper by Rasheed Wallace, Detroit went scoreless for the next six and a half minutes.
"You really can't control whether the ball is going in the hoop or not, but we got what we wanted," said Billups, who scored 19 points but shot only 6 of 19.
"We got exactly what we wanted and couldn't capitalize on it."
The Heat went on a 14-1 run during the Pistons' drought, without Wade or O'Neal scoring.
Instead, the Heat got a floater from Payton in the lane, back-to-back 3-pointers from Walker and James Posey, a free throw from Walker, a jumper from Jason Williams and a 3-pointer from Payton. That gave the Heat a 69-61 lead early in the fourth quarter.
Walker finished with 17 points and seven rebounds and Williams added 10 points.
It was the kind of all-around production that the Heat started receiving in its conference semifinal series against the Nets.
"I'm sure that this team right here was built for this round and for the next round," Wade said before the game. "And we'll see what we do with it."
Dallas Mavericks center DeSagana Diop broke his nose in Game 7 against the San Antonio Spurs and was to wear a face shield last night for the opener of the National Basketball Association's Western Conference playoff finals against Phoenix.
The Senegalese was injured when he caught an elbow from Spurs star Tim Duncan late in the fourth quarter. Diop stayed in and played stellar defense against Duncan, forcing him to go 1-for-7 in the overtime of Dallas' 119-111 victory.
Diop practiced with teammates Tuesday before being fitted for the shield. The team announced that he would wear the protection indefinitely. Doctors said surgery will not be necessary.
Also, the Suns said they'd decide yesterday whether Kurt Thomas will play in Game 1.
Thomas, a Dallas native who briefly played for the Mavericks in 1998, missed the last 29 games of the regular season with a stress fracture in his right foot.
"It's more probable," coach Mike D'Antoni said. "It's still a question we'll have to deal with day to day and figure it out. We're not close to making a decision yet."
high intensity
LeBron James is gone, and so are the defending champion San Antonio Spurs. The Los Angeles Clippers are on their annual summer holiday -- albeit a month later than usual.
That's OK. They all hung around long enough to help make this the best NBA playoffs in years.
"It's certainly the best second round in a long time," NBA commissioner David Stern said. "The intensity of play has been phenomenal."
Has it ever. Three Game 7s in the second round alone. A record-setting nine overtime games. A record-tying 14 games decided by two points or fewer.
"It's great for the NBA," said Phoenix guard Raja Bell, whose tying 3-pointer helped the Phoenix Suns beat the Clippers in a double-overtime thriller that was one of the most entertaining games in this playoffs.
"They've been some entertaining games. I've tuned in at the end of the games because they've been that close that you can get some good drama out of the last four or five minutes."
There's a reason for it.
Rules changes and a new wave of players with a wider array of skills have brought the game back to what it's supposed to look like at its best. Better still, the boring style of play which plagued the league after the breakup of Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls in 1998 -- the stuff that turned fans away in droves -- is all but gone.
"I think that it's taken some time, but the elimination of the illegal defensive guidelines have been helpful," Stern said. "I think the game has been a little bit more faster, a little more flow to it."
US television ratings are up, and the NBA will pass 23 million fans in combined attendance for the first time during Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals on Tuesday in Detroit.
Having James in his first postseason certainly helped.
His Cleveland Cavaliers nearly pulled a huge upset against the Detroit Pistons in their first postseason since 1998. The Clippers hadn't seen the playoffs since 1997, and all they did was come within a game of reaching the conference finals for the first time.
"I think there's a lot of parity in this league, and that's why you are seeing these great series," Pistons coach Flip Saunders said. "Every team is one bad thing away from being in trouble. Teams are very fragile these days."
Many series were a couple of plays away from having a different winner. Cleveland needed two game-winners from James against Washington in the first round. Without a lucky bounce of Brent Barry's 3-pointer late in Game 2, San Antonio may not even have gotten past its opening-round series with eighth-seeded Sacramento.
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