The Miami Heat faced the Detroit Pistons on Tuesday night at American Airlines Arena. This one wasn’t really that close as the Heat led from wire to wire.
The Miami Heat finished a somewhat hectic road trip on Friday night, as they faced the Los Angeles Lakers in Los Angeles. After a game that saw very poor shooting from both sides, the Miami Heat would end up losing the game to the Lakers, 80-95.
They would come into Tuesday’s game against the Detroit Pistons needing a win after going 1-2 on the road trip. They opened the game looking like they knew it too. It wasn’t so much the offensive side of the ball that showed it, as much as it was the defense.
Some will say it was just flat out poor shooting on the second leg of back to back games for the Pistons, but the Miami Heat held them to just 17 points in the first quarter, scoring 28 themselves. It was much of the same in the second quarter of the game, 31 to 20 in favor of Miami, which saw the half end with a score of 59-37.
The third quarter was a bit more closely played, assisted by a newly inspired Luke Kennard. He started to hit a few shots after going scoreless in the first half. The third quarter saw the scoring finish more even at 33-35 but also still saw the Heat with a 20 point lead.
The fourth quarter was where things tried to get tricky. Although Andre Drummond fouled out with 8:38 left in the fourth, the Pistons made several runs. It was the first game of the year that he didn’t register a double-double, while also ending a run of 14 straight double-doubles dating back to last season
The game got a bit tighter with around six minutes left to play, with the Pistons getting to within nine points and hovering in that area for the rest of the game. The Miami Heat wound up pulling the game out though, winning the game by a score of 108-117
It was another team effort from the Miami Heat, with everyone contributing across the board. Three things of note were that Kendrick Nunn seemed to regain some of his early-season form, Chris Silva played a pretty decent sized role in this game, and Udonis Haslem got his first minutes of the season as well.
The Miami Heat are right back at it on Thursday. They face the 4-6 Cleveland Cavaliers, another great opportunity to get another Eastern Conference win.