http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/sports/columnists/greg_cote/8514384.htm Posted on Sun, Apr. 25, 2004 Heat awakes to a cold playoff reality Can this be the same Heat? GREG COTE [email protected] NEW ORLEANS -- They weren't ready for this. As simple and flabbergasting and excuse-defying as that sounds, Heat players were not prepared on Saturday for the rugged intensity -- the raw desperation -- of the New Orleans Hornets. The scoreboard screamed it, especially in a first half as awful as any NBA playoff team should ever be permitted to play without being subject to arrest. The coach said it afterward, softly, but with a certain hiss. Stan Van Gundy was not happy. Incredulous would be more like it. It wasn't so much the 77-71 loss that halved Miami's series lead to 2-1 entering Game 4 here Tuesday. It was the way it unfolded. The sluggish Heat surrendered the run of play to the home team from the start. It was as if Miami expected Hornet players to enter the gym with hands raised, conceding the series, begging political asylum. Their fans were like that. The arena was one-third empty. But the Hornets were full of fire. "We were a little bit shocked by the intensity, and that's a little bit crazy," Van Gundy said in a quiet, emptying locker room, as a waiting bus idled outside. "That's what frustrates me the most. I don't know who they were listening to. We'd been telling them [to expect this] for three days." Club president and former coach Pat Riley briefly visited with the team afterward, showing support: Pat Rally. This was after one of Riley's favorite pearls of wisdom had played out with such gruesome accuracy. "The playoffs," Riley liked to say, "will humble you." And astound you, sometimes. Makes you wonder if the team that rollicked to a 30-point rout in Game 2 could possibly be the same Heat team that slogged and clanked through too much of Saturday. Can the road and a hostile crowd change one team's psyche so profoundly? The Hornets got back on defense so quickly and aggressively that Miami could not unleash its preferred running style. Confined to half-court sets, the Heat then shot horribly, except when frequent turnovers prevented the indignity. Except for Caron Butler (24 points, 15 rebounds) and sparks off the bench from Rafer Alston, awfulness displayed itself over most of the Heat roster. Lamar Odom, Dwyane Wade and Eddie Jones were a combined 8-for-39 shooting. Odom and Wade combined for 13 turnovers, and the latter scored (shhh!) two points, his Game 1 heroics suddenly seeming distant. "Dwyane made some very bad decisions," said Van Gundy, "and really struggled with the pressure they put on him. And we had a couple guys who can run a lot harder." The veteran Jones simply blamed the fact "key guys like myself didn't make shots," but it was more than that. Worse than that. The Heat got beat up. Out-worked. Out-wanted. The perfect face of the team in the postgame locker room was Odom's. He had six stitches sewn above his left eye after taking an accidental elbow from Baron Davis early in the fourth quarter. "I feel like it is swelling as you talk," he said. "Offensively, we came out flat," added Odom -- and how is that possible? The Heat played cautiously with the ball. Timidly, almost. "We stopped ourselves," Wade said. "We didn't run because guys were not wanting to turn the ball over. We didn't have no reason to be tight. But when you don't play as free as you normally do and think about turnovers, that's when they happen." The real miracle of Saturday is that -- for all of that sluggishness and miserable shooting and inexplicable laissez faire -- the Heat still trailed by two points and had possession with 1:47 to play. Had a real chance to win. Despite all of the rampant awfulness. Take that as the good news, Heat fans, if you're of a mood. Miami remains the better team and, even with a loss in Game 4, still would have two of the last three games at home. Hey, maybe the Heat lost in deference to the Dolphins on NFL draft day, not wishing to divert attention from the first-round selection of UM guard Vernon Carey. Basketball folks know football is king. It sure is in New Orleans, too, where fewer people were interested in the Hornets on Saturday than in whom the Saints were picking or what was happening with local hero Archie Manning's kid Eli. And how about the juxtaposition as that draft began, huh? You had a moment of silence in honor of Pat Tillman and his ultimate selflessness and sacrifice . . . followed immediately by Manning being disgruntled at the prospect of accepting millions of dollars from a team not of his choosing. Sorry for that brief tangent into football, but the Heat's 32.9 percent shooting makes a guy want to forget what he's just witnessed. Now, at least, the series gets good. "They're a young team," said the Hornets' Davis of the Heat "They're cocky. They back it up." Van Gundy called Saturday a lesson, the proverbial, ever-ready "wake-up call." Like he had a choice? "This was our first playoff game in my opinion," he said. "First one on the road, with people getting into them. Now they've got to go learn from it." They'd better. And that learning needs to be at the same pace as the Heat's offense needs to be. Fast. --

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