Heat outwork, out-hustle Knicks to take Game 3 victory
Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat drives past Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks during Game 3 on Saturday. Credit: Getty Images/Eric Espada
MIAMI — Above Julius Randle, Isaiah Hartenstein was shoving his way through Miami Heat players, technical fouls were being assessed against three players, and Randle just sat back on the court against the basket stanchion with an incredulous smile.
He’d been shoved to the floor by Miami backup center Cody Zeller in the final seconds of the third quarter. Hartenstein shoved Zeller and both got technical fouls, with Caleb Martin joining the fray for another technical foul. And with Pat Riley and Alonzo Mourning standing up at attention just a few rows back of the court, it seemed a fitting scene, with a frustrated, bemused Randle left to shake his head and wonder what was going on.
It was a mood for the Knicks from the start as they were beaten to loose balls, seemed lost against the pressure of the Miami defense, couldn’t shoot and mostly looked as if they’d just walked in off a wild night on South Beach as they were humbled, 105-86, at the Kaseya Center on Saturday afternoon.
The brief scuffle, hardly a blip on the radar in the context of the history of playoff games between the Knicks and Heat, was about as much fire as the Knicks showed in this game. Based on their social media posts, it seemed as if Mitchell Robinson delivering a birthday cake to Hartenstein on Friday was as wild as they got. So how to explain an effort like this in Game 3 of the best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal?
“They came in tough,” RJ Barrett said after the Heat took a 2-1 series lead. “They started out physical. Jimmy [Butler] had like eight points in the first two minutes or something. They just came out strong. They threw a punch and we battled throughout the game, but they started out great and they had a good game.”
To say Butler set the tone for Miami would be accurate. But how did no one set an equal tone for the Knicks? They fell behind from the start — never leading for a second — and trailed by as many as 22 points.
There were some things that might look passable in the boxscore — 20 points and seven assists for Jalen Brunson, 15 points and 11 rebounds for Josh Hart — but it was hard to find anything the Knicks could cling to on this day. They shot 34.1%, their worst field-goal percentage in a playoff game since May 3, 2012, against the Heat, and when Duncan Robinson started the second quarter with a three-pointer 22 seconds in, the Knicks never got within double-digits again.
“I think it doesn’t really matter how it happened,” Brunson said. “We lost. We got to come back and be better and just learn from our mistakes. Keep moving forward, keep our confidence.”
Butler came out of the game at the start of the fourth quarter — turning his right ankle again with 6:50 remaining in the third quarter as he drove toward the rim and staying in until the game seemed safely out of reach. The Knicks trimmed the deficit to 95-81 with 5:19 to play and the Heat re-inserted Butler. He immediately paid dividends, draining a baseline jumper.
At the start of the game, Butler displayed no ill effects of his ankle injury, taking Barrett into the lane on the first Miami possession and easily dropping in a short jumper over him. By the time the game was six minutes old, Butler had eight points on 4-for-6 shooting and had leaped to swat a Barrett shot.
But it wasn’t just Butler’s presence that put the Knicks in an early hole. The offense looked dysfunctional, trying to isolate against Bam Adebayo or Butler. Their first three possessions were a forced jumper by Randle that didn’t even hit the rim, an offensive foul on Randle and a sloppy turnover by Barrett as Butler poked the ball loose and Barrett lost it out of bounds.
Mostly, it just seemed like effort as the Heat attacked on both ends and the Knicks came out flat. Miami led by as many as 13 in the first quarter with the Knicks shooting 8-for-25 overall and 0-for-4 from beyond the arc. The Knicks seemed fortunate to come out of the quarter down just 29-21.
During one timeout, television cameras had Thibodeau imploring his team, “Don’t let them outwork us, don’t let them outwork us! Come on now! Don’t let them beat us on the boards! We’ve got to get some intensity into this game!”
But it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
A final fitting scene came with just over a minute left. Thibodeau finally sent Deuce McBride and Daquan Jeffries to the scorers’ table to come into the game and Randle was walking back across midcourt as the Heat tossed an outlet to Zeller all alone for a dunk, a final exclamation point on an ugly effort.
“The start of the game, I thought, we got back on our heels,” Thibodeau said. “Their aggressiveness, the ball in the paint — and then you gotta read the game. I didn’t think we played — we couldn’t get stops early, so we couldn’t get easy buckets. We paid the price.”
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
