Payton makes most of one shot for Heat
MIAMI – The play seemed to be breaking down. Dwyane Wade handed the ball off to Jason Williams, whose path to the basket was immediately blocked by ultraspeedy Dallas guard Devin Harris.
The score was tied, the game clock was at 12 seconds, the shot clock at 3.
Williams had two choices – force a shot, or take one more glance and find an open shooter.
He peeked right. He found Gary Payton.
“Devin did a good job cutting me off,” Williams said, “but Gary did his job a little bit better.”
Payton sold Josh Howard on a head fake, escape-dribbled left, then hit a 17-footer as the shot clock expired. It was Payton’s only attempt of the game, but his biggest basket since coming to Miami, one lifting the Heat to a 98-96 win Tuesday in Game 3 of the NBA finals.
On Wednesday, barely 12 hours removed from the heroics, Payton was still smiling.
“It’s just a shot that saved us from going down 3-0,” said Payton, still seeking his first championship after 16 years in the league. “Now we’re 2-1 and just trying to get the next one (today).”
The Heat host Game 4 tonight, looking to even the best-of-7 series with the Mavericks.
There was a time when Payton – who also got to the finals with Seattle in 1996 and the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004 – would be a team’s absolute top choice to take a shot with a game, and perhaps a season, on the line.
Not anymore – at least not on a team featuring Wade and Shaquille O’Neal.
Still, he’s a guy O’Neal desperately wanted – for these situations, if nothing else. He recruited Payton to come to Miami, to take a veteran minimum contract, but make the same kinds of savvy plays that he’d done so many times.
“That’s what we need to do at times,” Heat coach Pat Riley said. “We need to just play the game, not just look for somebody all the time.
“The four games we beat New Jersey, every single game went down to the wire … and somebody else made a shot. It wasn’t always Dwyane. It was somebody else, and last night it was Gary.”
So, in that pressure-filled moment, Payton ignored the fact that his only other basket in the finals was a meaningless layup at the end of Game 2, a 14-point loss in Dallas. He forgot that he was in a 7-for-34 slump.
Wade nurses knee
Heat guard Dwyane Wade didn’t practice Wednesday because of a left knee injury he sustained in Game 3 of the NBA finals, but said he would play when the series resumes today.
Wade, who had 42 points in Miami’s 98-96 win over Dallas in Game 3, was driven to a news conference on a small yellow flatbed vehicle so he wouldn’t have to hobble halfway around the arena. He said the knee was sore and swollen, but didn’t elaborate on the extent of the injury.