The Heat will go into the final three games of their current six-game swing through the West with a much better feeling after dismantling the Kings in Sacramento 128-99 Saturday night.
The way the trip began, with losses to the Pacers in Indianapolis and the Trail Blazers in Portland tagging them with five defeats in nine games, did not augur well for the defending NBA champions.
They played good defense in both games, holding the Pacers to 36.3 percent shooting and 87 points and the Blazers to 37.5 percent and 92, respectively, but their offense beyond the Big Three was non-existent.
LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh accounted for 66 of the team’s 77 points against the Pacers and 62 of their 90 against the Blazers.
Clearly, other players were going to be needed to step up.
Against the Kings, they did, especially Mario Chalmers.
After missing a potentially game-winning 3-pointer two nights earlier in Portland, Chalmers came alive in Sacramento, scoring a game-high 34 points and tying a franchise record for 3-pointers in a game.
The trio of Chalmers, Mike Miller, and Ray Allen outscored James-Wade-Bosh 56-47.
“It’s good to get a game like that anywhere,” coach Erik Spoelstra said in postgame television coverage on Heat Live. “It doesn’t matter home or away, especially coming off a tough start to our road trip.
“But so far our guys have really taken it to heart to get better each game, but also we had two good practices in between those two games just to try to fix some of those things, and we had our best game of the road trip.
“It will take a turn and continue to get difficult as we go on, but we can continue to build on this.”
Next up for the Heat is a Monday night game against the Jazz in Salt Lake City. The road swing ends in back-to-back affairs Wednesday and Thursday against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland and the Lakers in Los Angeles.
Record night: Chalmers matched a 20-year-old franchise record with his 10 triples against the Kings. Brian Shaw had set the mark against the Bucks in Milwaukee on April 8, 1993.
The interesting thing is Shaw was not particularly known for his 3-point shooting. In his 14-year career, Shaw shot only 30.4 percent from behind the 3-point arc, finishing with 431 treys in 943 games.
In his fifth season, Chalmers is shooting 36.3 percent on 3-pointers with 420 in 324 games.
Streak ends: James’ streak of 20-point games ended in Portland when he was held to just 15 points. James had scored at least 20 points in the Heat’s first 33 games, a franchise record to start the season and most in the NBA since 1981-82 when George Gervin began the season with 45 20-plus scoring games.
James bounced back with 20 points against the Kings despite taking only 10 shots from the field. He made seven. He also had seven assists, giving him 16 in the last two games.
The more the merrier: All 13 players available saw court time at Sacramento, including recently acquired Jarvis Varnado. Varnado scored two points and blocked a shot in playing just under six minutes.
Josh Harrelson, who was let go earlier in the week and then re-signed to a 10-day contract, played nearly three minutes but missed his only field goal attempt.
Battier out: Shane Battier missed the last two games against the Blazers and Kings with a strained right hamstring, but was able to go through a limited workout before the game at Sacramento.
Coming up: The Heat will be in Salt Lake City to take on the Jazz Monday night. The matchup should provide a measure of any progress the Heat have made in solving their rebounding woes. The Jazz are 14th in the league in rebounding, the Heat 29th out of 30 teams.
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