By Sam Perley, hornets.com
There’s a common saying during the NBA Playoffs that the series doesn’t start until the home team loses. For the Hornets’ sake (and postseason livelihood), lets hope that trend continues when the team returns to Charlotte to take on the Miami Heat for Games 3 and 4 beginning on Saturday night.
Obviously, things did not go as planned down in Miami as the Hornets kicked off their second playoff appearance in three seasons with a pair of rough outings against the Heat, falling into a challenging, but not insurmountable, 0-2 series hole. Adding insult to injury (literally), starting shooting guard, Nicolas Batum, left Game 2 in the fourth quarter after stepping on Justise Winslow’s foot. The Frenchman will be sidelined for Game 3 in what was officially diagnosed as a left foot strain.
While the ultimate results were the same in the series’ first two games, the Hornets have reason to be encouraged with their performance on Wednesday night. Kemba Walker knocked down a game-high 29 points, five rebounds and three assists while Al Jefferson had a stellar night with 25 points on 12-of-17 shooting and seven rebounds in 27 minutes off the bench.
A few areas Charlotte will have to shore up if it wants any chance of winning this series begin with three-point shooting as the team hit an uncustomary 1-of-16 from long distance in Game 2 (6.3 percent). The Hornets can also ill afford to let the Heat fire at will from behind the arc again as their division rivals hit 9-of-16 three-pointers on Wednesday night (56.3 percent).
As a whole, Miami shot 57.6 percent in Game 1 and 57.9 percent in Game 2, which would have ranked as the second-highest and highest field-goal percentages, respectively, by any Hornets’ opponent during the regular season.
“I feel like we played better today than we did three days ago,” Hornets head coach Steve Clifford said after the team’s Game 2 loss on Wednesday night. “That has to continue. For two games now, our offense has been good enough to win. We have to find a way to put together 48 good minutes of good defense. If we can do that, we can give ourselves a chance to win.”
There is reason to be optimistic if you are the Hornets. Since the NBA expanded to the current seven-game format in the first round beginning in 2003, teams trailing 0-2 are exactly 33-33 in Game 3 coming into this season. A win on Saturday in Charlotte might give the team just enough needed momentum to get things turned around.
“Miami did what they were supposed to do [by protecting] home court. Now we got to go home and do the same,” said Hornets center Al Jefferson after the Game 2 loss. “We’re down 2-0, but we’re not out of it. I feel like we played well tonight but the Heat did their job. [Now] we got to go protect our home court. We’ve played well at home all season long, so that’s something that we’re used to. We just have to go do it.”
For what it’s worth, Charlotte has been in this same situation before, albeit many years ago. Down 0-2 to the Milwaukee Bucks in the 2001 Eastern Conference Semifinals, the Hornets rallied to win the next three games to take a 3-2 series lead. However, Milwaukee came back from 12 points down in the second half of Game 6 to pull off an improbable win, eventually going on to win Game 7 as well. Obviously, these two teams are completely different being 15 years apart but certainly something worth noting.
At some point, the Hornets will need to pull out at least one victory in Miami if they want to notch their first postseason series win in 14 years but right now, the immediate concern is an essential do-or-die Game 3 in Charlotte on Saturday evening. Perhaps, in a season regularly defined by comebacks, the Hornets could indeed be saving their best for last.
Key Matchup vs. Heat: Marvin Williams vs. Luol Deng
With Nicolas Batum out of the mix for Game 3, the Hornets will need some big showings from Marvin Williams when they square off against Luol Deng and the Miami Heat for the first time on their home floor on Saturday evening… Williams is coming off a pair of rough outings in Games 1 and 2, combining to hit 1-of-17 field-goal attempts for two points after averaging 16.8 points against the Heat in four regular season games this year… Charlotte will need to see regular-season Williams for the rest of the series if it wants to slow down Miami’s red-hot Luol Deng… The 12th-year veteran out of Duke University, Deng has put up 23.5 points on 70.8 percent shooting (54.5 percent from three-point range) along with 6.5 rebounds through the series’ first two games and will be looking to keep things going in a decisive Game 3… If the Hornets want to get back into this series, they will need a big offensive performance from Marvin Williams combined with some lockdown defense on Miami’s Luol Deng when these teams reconvene in Charlotte on Saturday night.