Every time you thought it couldn’t get worse, it got worse. The Miami Heat trailed by 17 points at half, and then Goran Dragic didn’t come out for the second half. Injured foot. Torn plantar fascia.
It wasn’t enough to see the deficit dip to embarrassing 32 points on this national stage. Bam Adebayo trudged off to the locker room in the third quarter. Injured shoulder.
The Los Angeles Lakers had the Game 1 of these NBA Finals in long before their 116-98 win over the Miami Heat on Wednesday, but that wasn’t the problem for the Heat as they huddle up for Game 2. It’s who is in the huddle.
This night added injuries to insult. It was that kind of an all-nightmare game, all night long, the Miami Heat’s 116-98 loss. As in, everyone had something horrifying happen to the point it was a nightmare for all.
Go down the list. For Dragic, it’s an injury that surely ends the great run of the Heat’s leading scorer in the postseason. For Adebayo, it’s a shoulder injury that seems to have been bothering him for a while.
For Jimmy Butler, it was a twisted ankle at the end of the first half and wasn’t the same thereafter. Add him to the injury list.
For coach Erik Spoelstra is was plotting how a team that relies on everyone will play when not everyone is healthy.
For Duncan Robinson, it was being switched off constantly onto LeBron James. That didn’t go well.
For Pat Riley, it had to be hard watching the Heat make a remarkable, even magical, run to reach these NBA Finals and seeing LeBron James pop the bubble on the first night. And if not LeBron with 25 points, Anthony Davis sure did with 34 points and nine rebounds.
Yes, that was the Lakers. That’s the team many wondered how the Miami Heat could stop when healthy. That’s the one-two combination of two of the game’s best players you can’t appreciate until you’re in the middle of it.
And the Heat were in the middle of something they didn’t want to be Wednesday. Hello, darkness, my old friend?
“We’re better than we showed tonight,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.
“We’ve got to put up more of a fight,” said Jimmy Butler, who played through a twisted ankle late in the first half. “I don’t think we did that.”
They’ve been so for three heart-pumping series. It tells of their run that this is the first time they’ve trailed in a series these playoffs. It feels strange to say now, too, but Game 1 couldn’t have started any better for the Heat.
They made their 3-point shots early. They had a 13-point lead midway through the first quarter. That only made you do higher math the way it fell apart from there.
There was a 30-point turnaround to the Lakers’ 17-point lead at half. And then the injuries started coming. Dragic is the Heat’s top scorer these playoffs. Adebayo is their most valuable player, especially this series when his size is needed against Davis.
ESPN’s Jeff Van Gundy made the proper point about the silliness of saying, “Next man up.” Not at his level. Not in this series.
The unsettling part is the injuries came after the night was done. Because it was finished somewhere in the second quarter you started to sense something seriously missing from this Heat team.
Was it the patented Heat defense? Well, yes. Or maybe it was just the Lakers being too much. They entered the Finals shooting a meh 35 percent on 3-pointers in the postseason. They shot 65 percent in the first half as they put the night away early.
Was it the vaunted Heat bench? Well, yes. Or maybe again it was just the Lakers are deeper. They doubled up the Heat in the first half, 20 points to 10 points.
Was it the Heat offense? Well, that, too. Forget the final numbers considering the score was numbing through much of the second half. After making those first 3-point shots, they missed three of their next 13.
So it was all that, but it was the Lakers even more. If the Eastern Conference finals told a story of two teams when the Heat fell behind to healthy double-digits to Boston in the third quarter in three games and recovered to win. That’s not happening this series. No sir. LeBron isn’t going to fall for that fool’s gold as Game 1 showed.
Nor will he care much that the Heat lose certainly one in Dragic. Oh, right, LeBron James was 1-8 in the first game of NBA Finals. This is where you’re supposed to say that doesn’t matter all that much, because he’s won three rings. The truth is that stat doesn’t matter, because it’s contorted when you peel back the endings.
Just look at his Heat years. The Heat lost Game 1 three times — and won two of those titles against Oklahoma City and the first meeting against San Antonio. They won Game 1 once — and lost the title to Dallas.
So what does Game 1 mean?
It was a nightmare for the Heat. That’s what it means. And with Dragic and Adebayo injured, it’s hard to see the nightmare letting up this series.
