Miami Heat Had ‘Mental Breakdown’ Late in Game 2
The Heat made a myriad of errors at the end of Game 2 of the NBA Finals last night, but the most glaring gaffe was not fouling Dirk Nowitzki prior to his game-winning layup, when they still had a foul to give. From the Palm Beach Post: “The Mavericks called timeout with 24.5 seconds left. The game was tied. Everyone knew who would get the ball. Erik Spoelstra, however, had options. He had the option of assignment. He assigned Chris Bosh, not Udonis Haslem, to Dirk Nowitzki. ‘Yeah, that’s a tough one,’ Spoelstra said. ‘I know UD probably is really wishing he had that opportunity to defend him. He had gotten a couple over the top, and the end of the game running it all the way down to the clock, could have gone with either guy. Both guys are good defenders.’ Spoelstra had the option of ordering a foul, before anyone shot. Apparently, he did something close. ‘We talked about it,’ Spoelstra said. ‘We’ve been in that situation before. We didn’t use the foul. Obviously, it looks like right now you could second-guess that, but we didn’t take it.’ ‘It was a mental breakdown on us,’ Dwyane Wade said. ‘We’ll take it. We all said in the huddle, our coaches said it. Sometimes when you’re in the moment — Dirk made a great move to get a little step on Chris. Obviously if we can go back and do it, we have grabbed him before he could get up.’ ‘He gave me a quick move, and at that point, I didn’t feel that I had leverage for the foul, because he was going into a shooting motion,’ Bosh said. ‘Like I say, it was just all bad defense for me.’”
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