At the crucial moments of the game, when the popes burned, the glorious Kevin Durant appeared and with a total of 32 points helped the Suns (7-1) beat the Heat (3-4), on Wednesday night at the Footprint Center in Phoenix, Arizona, at the start of a six-game tour virtually around the United States.
The tour will continue against the Nuggets (5-3), the great Nikola Jokic, on Friday (9 p.m. TV: Sun. Radio WQAM 560, WAQI 710 AM in Spanish) at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado.
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The Heat came from going down 111-110 against the Sacramento Kings last Monday night at the Kaseya Center in Miami. And Wednesday night also gave in in a very tight way.
Had it not been for Durant another it would have been the fate of the ‘Suns’ not. In the final stretch of the match, however, the striker appeared in all his dimensions to score the points needed for the Suns to score the win.
The Heat’s top scorers were Tyler Herro with 28 units, Haywood Highsmith with 19, Jimmy Butler with 15, Bam Adebayo with 12 and 12 rebounds, and Duncan Robinson with nine points.
The 10 players Spoelstra used on Wednesday scored. For the second consecutive meeting, Herro became Miami’s best basketball player, but unfortunately in neither game, his team was able to win.
The Suns weathered Kevin Durant with 32 cartons, Devin Booker with 22, Jusuf Nurkic with 20 and 18 rebounds, and Grayson Allen with 12.
The 1st half ended 58-55 in favor of the ‘Suns’. Great start had Herro, with triples, passes, and big individual actions that allowed the Heat to stop a rival who leads the Pacific division of the Western Conference.
From the beginning, the match was very balanced, with outstanding performances by Herro and Buttler for the Heat and Durant and Nurkic side for the Suns. The first quarter ended with the home’s 26-25 lead.
It was so narrow the advantage that the front on the board changed multiple times. On seven occasions the game was tied in the first half. In the triples, the Heat was very successful with seven of 15 after the first two quarters. The rookies Pelle Larsson and Kelel Ware showed talent.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has a master hand in forming the new values and knows when to give them the opportunity and how to do them so that they can smoothly assimilate their entry into the League of the Stars.
Proof of that is Jovic, who now holds the team and only in his second year, he performs with the safety of an experienced one.
In the third period, Miami took advantage of the Suns’ flaws in the Suns’ shots and took the biggest lead in the game, 78-67.
In that stretch, the Heat got 15 cartons of advantage, but Durant reacted with some good deeds and shortened the 84-73 account and then 87-81.
The Suns managed to narrow the gap to a single score and closed the third period down 87-84. In the fourth period, the locals tied in 90, and from then on the game reached its climax.
Every ball looked like it was going to define the contest and the battle was developing point-to-point.
With 3:11 minutes to go, and with a 106-103 lead for the Suns, Spoelstra asked for time to adjust lines because it was the decisive moment of the match. Durant, however, made the Heat’s reaction impossible.
In the last play, with four seconds on the clock and with the need to score a triple to tie, the ball came to Butler, who was in position to score a double, when he backed off for the three-point line and gave the Suns’ defensive opportunity to close all the chances of the attackers. That’s how the Heat’s hope went.
In his only two previous outings so far this season, the Heat came out angry against the Hornets in Charlotte and the Wizards in Washington, DC.
