Part of being the runner up-turned- favorite is handling both expectancies and devils. This is not a new charge for the Miami Heat nonetheless it doesn’t mean they are immunized to one side effect, either. Odds

The Heat has generally gotten off to a strong beginning to the season, blowing away their competitors most nights and successful at least three games so far that pretty effortlessly could’ve been losses. So what happened Tuesday against the Golden State Warriors was portion regression to the mean and part regression to 2011. Scores

This time the Heat didn’t get the clutch shot and didn’t execute under stress. And for all his talk about performing with a rather more free psychological perspective and putting in the hours to work on his post game, LeBron James looked like the lost and initial guy from last June in that annoying 4th quarter.

Coming from 17 points down the Warriors came back to beat the Heat 111-106 in overtime. It’s a thrilling night for the Golden State fans including owner Joe Lacob, who ripped off his suit coat and stamped around the sidelines down the stretch like a university coach. It was a season highlight film type win for the Warriors, who had lost 5 straight games and were struggling with scoring and wounds.

The Warriors’ greatest player, Monta Ellis, missed 16 shots and had 9 turnovers. A couple of the team’s starters, Stephen Curry and Andris Biedrins, didn’t play with injury and another, Kwame Brown, ended the game in the locker room. The game’s hero, Nate Robinson, had 24 points but also missed 8 of 12 shots and had some absolutely mindless plays across the game.

Golden State entered the fourth quarter down 12 points and shot just 36% with five turnovers in the period. They only shot 31 % with 12 turnovers in the whole 2nd half. On their last 4 possessions of regulation the Warriors had 2 turnovers and, regardless of having thirteen seconds, were unable to get a shot off on the last possession.

And they won the set!

“That game was there to be had,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra asserted. “We needed 3 defensive stops.”

In fact the Heat got plenty of defensive stops. They’d too many turnovers, 22 of them, but it was fairly survivable mainly because they kept the Warriors to forty percent shooting general and forced twenty turnovers of their own.

The Heat (8-2) lost for a similar situation they lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the Finals and the same reason they’d their earlier loss of the season against the Atlanta Hawks, when they scored just 42 points in the second half. When under stress, their offense is still a soft place and it still starts with James.

After scoring 23 points on 9-of-16 shooting after 3 quarters, James didn’t even attempt a shot in the fourth quarter even as his team’s offense was hemorrhaging around him. Wade ended with 34 points and looked formidable for much of the night. But he was 1-of-8 shooting in the fourth quarter, the results of missing three games with a foot injury clearly catching up with him, and there was no assistance.

But at some particular point the Heat and James are going to have to find a rhythm in tough fourth-quarter circumstances. Tues. wasn’t simply a missed chance, it had been a reversal.

“It was clearly a distinct game than we’ve been playing,” Spoelstra recounted. “That will adjust.”