NBA Playoffs 2011: Miami Heat Clinches the No. 2 Seed in the East

April 11th, 2011 by Robert Felton Leave a reply »
LeBron James scored 34 points and Miami held on for a 98-90 win over the Atlanta Hawks, which, along with the Boston Celtics falling 95-94 to the Washington Wizards, clinches the No. 2 seed for the Miami Heat.

The Heat will face either the New York Knicks or the Philadelphia 76ers in the first round of the playoffs. Currently, the 76ers appear to be the Heat's most likely opponent as they are one-and-a-half games back of the New York Knicks for the sixth seed.

The Hawks nearly rallied all the way back from a 20-point deficit in Miami and tied the game 88-88 late in the fourth quarter. Perhaps fatigue began to set in, but Miami looked visibly out of sync early in the fourth quarter as the Hawks began to pressure the passing lanes and rallied behind Josh Smith and Jamal Crawford, who scored 17 and 13 points, respectively.

The game was marred somewhat near the end of the final quarter when Atlanta's Zaza Pachulia drove inside for a basket. Zydrunas Ilgauskas felt that there was excessive contact on the play and a la LeBron James' play on Jermaine O'Neal a day earlier against the Celtics, bounced the ball off P ...

Read Full Article at Bleacher Report - NBA
Article written by

Advertisement

Comments are closed.