MIAMI — The Heat had won six straight. The Nets had won five in a row against Miami.
Somebody was going to lose their streak, and in the end it was Brooklyn.
Beforehand Heat coach Erik Spoelstra bristled when asked what the Nets had done to give his team trouble, sounding insulted.
Then his players took it out on Brooklyn in a 122-115 victory before a crowd of 19,866 at Kaseya Center.
“I’m not going to concede that (they’ve given us trouble),” Spoelstra huffed. “Ok, I mean, this is just competition; we’ve got to figure it out. Whether they think they’ve handled us easily or whatever, I don’t know where that’s coming from.
“But they’re good team; you have to respect that. They play fast, they shoot a lot of 3s, they’re a very good driving team. Now, we do some things that we think we do very well, also. Now we’ll just figure out who can be the better team (Thursday).”
Miami was.
By a margin, behind star Jimmy Butler and his game-high 36 points.
The Nets (6-6) had been the last team to beat the Heat, rallying from 16 points down minus three starters on Nov. 1.
They actually came in having beaten Miami in five straight games stretching back to March 26, 2022, matching their longest-ever run against the Heat.
That had been the longest active win streak for any team vs. the Heat, and the best by any Eastern Conference team against them since Boston (from Jan. 21, 2019 through Jan. 28, 2020).
But it came to an end Thursday night, at the hands of Butler.
“Yeah, there’s a reason why they’ve won six games in a row,” Brooklyn coach Jacque Vaughn had said beforehand. “The ability to really defend at a high level, cause havoc on the defensive end of the floor, really playing scrappy basketball since we saw them last – and that’s equated to six wins in a row. So, tough task for us against a team that’s playing extremely well.”
As well as anybody in the NBA right now, riding a league-high seven-game winning streak after carving up Brooklyn’s defense for .519 shooting.
The Heat (8-4) jumped ahead for good with a 14-0 run to close the second quarter, and Butler poured in 18 by himself in the third.
It was the highest-scoring period of his Heat career.
Playing without injured point guard Ben Simmons and leading scorer Cam Thomas, the Nets were led by Mikal Bridges who had a team-high 23 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
Lonnie Walker IV scored 23 off the bench, while center Nic Claxton and Cam Johnson each had 16.