http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/basketball/heat/ sfl-skolnick25apr25,0,7396727.column?coll=sfla-sports-heat Sports columnist -------------------------------------------------------- Ethan J. Skolnick SKOLNICK: Run for it, Heat Published April 25, 2004 NEW ORLEANS · Lamar Odom touched his puffy eye. "Hopefully it won't close," he said. He might not feel that way this morning, if forced to review the Heat's unsightly offensive performance. This was something the Heat's high-flying kids never saw coming, but something they probably had coming, soon as they stopped flying downcourt. Recess ended Saturday in the Big Easy as the Heat's bells were rung, not to mention its shoulders jammed, noses bruised, ankles twisted, eyelids cut. Seems Odom, Dwyane Wade and the boys weren't quite prepared for the greeting they'd receive from a Hornets squad far more desperate and determined than it let on 70 hours earlier. This had the Heat coach wondering about the functionality of another body part: the ears. Apparently, they'd been plugged when he warned how physically New Orleans would play. "Obviously, from the way we played," Stan Van Gundy said after the 77-71 loss. "And that's the thing that frustrates me the most, because I don't know who they're listening to. For three days, we told them exactly how it was going to be. But you know, this is their first time through it, a lot of them in the playoffs, and this is their first playoff game." So those players got exposed a bit, because they didn't play their game. They played as if they had tied hands to go with their plugged ears. They played into the hands of the Hornets, who were able to engage them in a fight once the Heat stopped running its race. We have all gotten caught up in the Heat's run, for one reason: The team has run, not recklessly, but with just enough abandon. When it stands too still and you get a good look, it doesn't look quite so good. You see flaws. Lack of size. Lack of shooters, especially when Van Gundy benches Rasual Butler. Absence of a traditional starting point guard, with the miscast Wade struggling to get his team into sets and get his offensive game off. "We're not that good a half-court team," Eddie Jones said. Sometimes the slowdown offense is crisp as a soggy cracker. But by playing freely and aggressively the past few weeks and getting just enough cheap points, the Heat has made its situation seem more than half-full. It has imposed its strengths of quickness and tenacity on opponents instead of feeding them its weaknesses. It says something about the team's resolve and defense that it had late chances even while missing 67.1 percent of its shots and getting only eight points on the break. It also suggests the Heat will still win this series if it just pushes itself to push the tempo. Sure, it's not always easy to run, especially if you're not rebounding well. And Van Gundy credited the Hornets for getting back. "We just wanted to get them in the half-court offense and make them shoot jumpers," Hornets guard Baron Davis said. But the Heat also got in its own way. It got unusually edgy. "We just weren't running," Rafer Alston said. "I don't know why. We had break chances. We're trying to be too cautious with the ball, so we didn't turn it over, and we ended up turning over everything." Twelve times in the first half, all but two in the half-court. Oddly, these players play more error-free when playing freely, with Wade and Odom making better decisions on the move. So the Heat got something else: the message. Jones talked about how, even with he Hornets faceguarding the ball, "when guys like Lamar get it, we got to grab it and push it up the floor. We all just got to run." Caron Butler said, "We limit ourselves more than they limit us. We were walking the ball up a lot instead of just running. At home we feed off our crowd energy, and we've just got to feed off our-selves, the 15 guys in this room." One was beaten up more the others, even if he had no stitches to show for it. Still, after hitting only 1 of 8 shots, scoring only two points, committing six turnovers without recording an assist and sitting for much of the fourth quarter, Wade was not beaten down. "They made it very tough on him, and he made some very bad decisions, and really struggled with the pressure they put on him," Van Gundy said. "He'll learn." "Now we know what to do, we know the atmosphere on the road in the playoffs," Wade said. How even a half-empty building can be unnerving, especially with every possession meaning so much. But how it shouldn't scare him and his teammates into playing cautiously. Saturday they were looking over at the bench in the final minutes, only to find their coach telling them to just turn and run. "Now we know how it's going to be," Jones said. How it's got to be. They can't run from this challenge. Just from end to end. Copyright c 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel --

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