Bad Beats Worse. Barely.

Heat let Knicks win, 91-88

The Miami Heat currently have the worst record in top-flight American professional basketball. And, apparently they are quite keen on defending that status. They have benched their best player, Dwyane Wade, for the rest of the season and their coach, the tactician formerly known as Pat Riley, has announced that he will likely stop attending games. They are first at being worst and they did not take it lightly that the Knicks were challenging them for this position heading into tonight's game. At tip-off the Knicks had lost seven on the bounce and had garnered more attention for their ineptitude than the categorically worse Heat had.

Nevertheless, all was going according to plan tonight in Miami. For both teams. The Knicks established a seven point lead heading into the fourth quarter and stretched that lead to 10 points with a little less than eight and a half to go. It seemed like everyone was going to win. The Knicks would win. And the Heat would lose. Which meant that they actually won in the race for the #1 draft pick.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the ping pong balls. The Heat accidentally caught up with the Knicks. Even though they were trying to lose, the Heat staged some sort of default come back and found themselves within three points with a minute and a half remaining. A timeout was called by the Knicks, but the real action was in the other huddle. Pat Riley must have been beligerant at his players. He immediately removed 2 of the 5 players responsible for the comeback and sent those still in the game out with the appropriate instructions. I'm paraphrasing here, but I'm pretty sure he just said, "Lose!"

I guess that is what he said mostly based on the way his team played over those last 90 seconds. It was clear they fix was on when Mark Blount threw up an ill-advised three pointer with way too much time left on the shot-clock for a guy like Mark Blount to be shooting threes. In fact, the instant before he lofted the shot MSG play-by-play man Mike Breen actually uttered the words "the Heat do not need a three here."

Watching Pat Riley coach the last minute or so of that game I felt like Nick Nolte's character in Blue Chips when he realizes that Tony was shaving points. I didn't believe. I didn't want to believe it. But, when Ricky Davis clearly went into an orchestrated dive roll to allow an inbounds pass to fly over his head, giving the ball back to the Knicks and essentially ending the game, then I knew it. Pat Riley was no better than Tony on this night. In fact he may have been worse. After all, Western still won on the night Tony shaved those points.