A strong second half from LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers powered them past the Miami Heat 117-108 Wednesday evening inside Crypto.com Arena.
The Heat held a 14-point first-half lead and a 12-point advantage heading into the break. But a quick 16-5 Lakers spurt cut the deficit to one with over six minutes left in the third quarter. Duncan Robinson’s one-handed slam in semi-transition eventually widened it back to double digits with four minutes left, though Los Angeles ended the quarter on a 10-2 run to make it a one-possession game heading into the final quarter.
Former Heat guard Gabe Vincent gave the Lakers an 88-87 lead with 10:47 left. Alec Burks tied it at 92 moments later, but the Heat were unable to get back in front the remainder of the contest. Three straight baskets from James buoyed the advantage to nine points with less than two minutes left, which was practically all she wrote.
James, Hachimura and Vincent combined to score 25 points in the fourth quarter alone–two more than the Heat had in its entirety (23). Miami couldn’t generate enough offense outside of “Herro Ball” from Tyler Herro, who put together another spectacular 34-point performance on 12-of-18 shooting and 7-of-12 from 3-point range.
In total, the Los Angeles Lakers outscored the Miami Heat 63-42 in the second half. On the night as a whole, Miami coughed the rock up 13 more times while finishing with 24 fewer points in the paint.
On a more positive note, Miami did have a very encouraging performance from Kel’el Ware off the bench, tallying eight points and 11 rebounds. The 7-foot backup big made multiple heady plays while also blocking Anthony Davis (on his very first play) and breaking up multiple lobs defensively in his 18 minutes of action. Nikola Jovic finished with 12 points and eight assists while Haywood Highsmith had 12 points on 5-of-10 shooting.
Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to supplement Herro down the stretch.
Miami concludes the road-trip 3-3 and will return home for Friday’s contest against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets. That won’t be what people want to see, however, as Jimmy Butler returns from his seven-game suspension.
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Tyler Herro led all scorers with 34 points. The next 6 highest scorers all played for the Lakers.
Trade Jimmy, get Tyler some help
As referenced above, the Heat had 19 turnovers to 6 for the Lakers. That hurt as much as anything LeBron did. Underachievement by Bam, Rozier, and Duncan didn’t help either.
I cant remember when Rosier had a good game last time. If Dru would be healthy, he would already sit at the end of the bench.
Ware was great.