There aren’t supposed to be any excuses on the road to elite status, but the Miami Heat had a pretty decent one Thursday night in its 130-102 loss to the Nuggets.
There was no LeBron James.
A sprained ankle kept the superstar out of the Heat lineup against the Nuggets, and the weary-legged unit — which played the night before in Los Angeles against the Clippers — couldn’t keep up the pace after the first quarter.
But, you know, no excuses.
“Nothing to be alarmed about,” Heat guard Dwyane Wade said. “It’s part of the NBA season. Some nights you’re going to struggle and are not going to have it. It’s a tough back-to-back for us. Unfortunately we weren’t able to come out and make all our shots and stop them the way we wanted to.”
James Jones started in James’ place and instead of the 25.4 points, 7.0 rebounds and 7.2 assists the Heat normally gets from the starting small forward, the Heat got six points, zero rebounds and one assist.
But, you know, no excuses.
“Denver just jumped all over us and never looked back,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Everybody deals with it (back-to-backs). Everybody will play 20-plus back-to-backs. We’ve been pretty good at them. We didn’t show that tonight. Regardless of LeBron being out or not, we felt like we had enough.”
The second quarter was Miami’s undoing. The Heat was outscored 34-20 and made just eight shots, although its field-goal percentage for the quarter wasn’t horrible (44.4 percent, 8-of-18 shooting). The problem was turnovers. Six of them in the quarter, and the Nuggets, behind the speed and fearlessness of Ty Lawson, turned those into seven points.
Meanwhile, the Nuggets turned the ball over to the Heat just twice and those were converted into just two points.
So nothing went right, the Nuggets ran and nearly hid, and the Heat entered the half down 17.
And with no LeBron and a Nuggets defense that concentrated its efforts on Wade and Chris Bosh, the Heat was basically sunk. The deficit grew larger in the third, up to 27 points with 4:29 remaining in the quarter and ballooned to 30 by the end of quarter.
The fourth was a mere formality.
Defense was a complete disaster as the Nuggets shot 53.4 percent from the field and 48.4 percent from the 3-point line. The Nuggets’ 130 points were the most allowed by the Heat this season.
Coupled with Wednesday night’s loss, Thursday marked consecutive losses for the Heat for the first time since it lost three straight from Nov. 20-24.
Chris Dempsey: 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com
