MIAMI | All the Miami Heat banners, reminders of everything from division titles to the 2006 NBA championship, were missing from the rafters Monday night.
Fitting, because the Heat look nothing like champions these days.
Danny Granger had 20 points and 11 rebounds, Brandon Rush added 20 points and the Indiana Pacers added to Miami’s week of woe, beating the Heat 93-77 in the worst shooting game of Dwyane Wade’s career.
Wade finished with three points on 1-for-13 shooting. He had never shot so poorly when taking at least 13 tries, and the point total was the third-lowest of his career. He has been held scoreless twice.
LeBron James scored 25 points and Chris Bosh had 21 points and 11 rebounds for Miami, which learned earlier Monday that top reserve Udonis Haslem will need surgery to repair a torn foot ligament and be out indefinitely.
T.J. Ford scored 13 points and Mike Dunleavy added 11 for the Pacers, who took control with a 29-11 run in the second quarter.
The Pacers (6-6) had been 0-4 when scoring less than 99 points. Granger hit a pair of 3-pointers 36 seconds apart in the final 2½ minutes to seal it, the last one giving Indiana a 91-75 lead and sending just about everyone who was left in the seats heading to the exits.
Hours after learning Haslem will have surgery Tuesday, the Heat struggled just about every step of the way.
Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Carlos Arroyo each scored 12 for Miami.
Indiana’s reserves outscored their counterparts 40-4. The only Miami reserve to score was Jamaal Magloire, who entered with three points all season.
Here’s a perfect example of how the night went for Miami: With 1:16 left, James and Bosh both leaped for a defensive rebound. They both missed it, both fell over backwards, and the ball went to Indiana.
Wade missed his last nine shots of Friday’s game against Charlotte, when he was battling flulike symptoms. He didn’t play Saturday in Memphis, then made just one of his 13 shots against the Pacers.
So over that span, he’s gone a baffling 1 for 22 from the field.
And when Wade got an attempt to finally fall, it didn’t count.
Wade drove into the lane from the right wing midway through the third quarter, tossed up a shot off the board and in — only to have it waved off by Solomon Jones drawing a charge on the play. Wade attacked Jones again on the next Miami possession, got his layup blocked, then got a technical foul out of frustration.
Not even two minutes later, the 7-foot-3, 260-pound Ilgauskas was called for a charge against 6-foot, 160-pound Darren Collison, who had no problem standing tall against a man who looks twice his size.
It was that sort of night for the Pacers.
They took the fight to Miami, with one sequence in the third quarter maybe summing it all up best. Indiana held the ball for 54 straight seconds on one possession — an absolute eternity in a game with a 24-second shot clock.
The strange series began with 1:18 left in the third, when James missed a 3-pointer and Indiana controlled the rebound. Ford had a layup blocked and got his own rebound. Granger missed a 3-pointer, with Jones getting the offensive board. Granger missed another jumper, Jones getting yet another long rebound, and then Granger misfired yet again from beyond the arc.
Magloire ended the possession with a defensive rebound, James made two free throws at the other end, and the Heat were down 74-64 entering the fourth.
NOTES: Boxing promoter Don King was at the game. … The Pacers used their fourth different starting lineup in 12 games. … Miami won last season’s two home games against Indiana by 34 and 30 points.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.