(Photo courtesy of the Miami Heat // Twitter)
The Miami Heat dominated the tanking, injury-riddled Memphis Grizzlies with a 136-120 inside Kaseya Center Saturday night.
Many will remember the game because of the Myron Gardner-Scotty Pippen Jr. brawl with 1:55 left in the fourth quarter, but that’s neither here nor there.
Actually, let’s rewind it once more, because it was epic; Gardner, who was rightfully ejected, did instigate it, and he’s been in involved in plenty of scuffles over the last 15 or so games. But he rules, point blank.
The game was beyond out of reach at the time of the incident. Miami outscored Memphis 61-42 over the first 22 minutes in the second half before the Grizzlies did enough leg work to make the score a little more respectable over the final 1:59.
Andrew Wiggins led the Heat with 28 points on 9-of-10 shooting, including a perfect 4-of-4 from 3-point range. He also grabbed seven rebounds with three assists and a steal in 29 minutes. Norman Powell bounced back after a rough game Friday, scoring 25 points on 10-of-16 shooting with six dimes.
Tyler Herro, who picked up right where he left off (before cooling down), finished with 14 points in his second consecutive game coming off the bench. We’ll see how long he remains on the bench, but the Heat’s lineup looks infinitely more balanced when he is. Kel’el Ware had 11 points and 15 rebounds in 19 minutes; Jaime Jaquez Jr. tallied 12 points and five rebounds on 5-of-12 shooting; Bam Adebayo had 13 points, six rebounds and five assists.
Starting in place of an injured Davion Mitchell, Heat rookie Kasparas Jakucionis scored 12 points with five assists on 4-of-6 shooting. He remained hot from 3-point range, knocking down two of his three attempts.
The Heat’s 16-point win over Memphis moved them to the No. 7 seed in the East, improving their record to 31-27. Their three-game win streak was the longest in nearly two months; they won four-straight from Dec. 26-Jan. 1.
Miami has largely been inconsistent this year. Though it’s doing what it should: Beat up on bad teams, as evidenced by its 4-1 stretch against Washington, New Orleans, Atlanta and now Memphis. Three of those teams are outright tanking; Miami’s lone loss came to Utah, who’s also blatanly tanking — arguably its worst loss of the season to date.
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