On the second night of a back-to-back set in Brooklyn, the Heat produced its worst output of the season (31 points) in the first half of Jimmy Butler’s return. He had 10 points at intermission on a backdoor feed, plus two layups, but the offense was stuck in the mud, going uphill while jammed in second gear. The Nets were holding the visitors to 26.2% shooting and no baskets outside of the paint.

For the hosts, Nic Claxton finished over mismatches and broke the zone for a slam. Cam Thomas scored at close and long range in transition and evaded defenders for lane access in the halfcourt. And Bridges disposed of Tyler Herro, Haywood Highsmith and Nikola Jović for four of six baskets inside the arc.

At the break, the Brooklyn squad led 45-31. The guests had recorded just six fastbreak points to the Nets’ 16 and had zero second-chance marks to the hosts’ seven. Eight extra boards gave the Nets seven more tries on the goal, and its bench was outscoring the Heat’s 18-5.

Then the Heat’s offense went off like a grenade, notching 37 points in the third quarter, ignited by Herro’s consecutive triples on the break. He continued carbonizing drop coverage and connecting on a 14-foot floater in Dorian Finney-Smith’s eye, totaling a dozen points for the interval. And Butler converted all three attempts, endlessly drawing contact to the hole like a running back punishing defenders at the line of scrimmage. He accumulated 14 points

Defensively, the Heat permitted four of 12 triples and were disruptive near the hoop. Adebayo switched on to Bridges, denying his jumper at the elbow, and Butler + Lowry came up with steals.

Four possessions were wasted in the fourth off with a careless pass by Kyle Lowry into a defender’s chest, Adebayo getting ripped and setting an illegal screen and Caleb Martin traveling. But the Heat held the Nets to five of 21 shots, and Herro nailed consecutive baskets with under a minute left- a floater at the right elbow and another from 13 feet out on the left side- to force overtime.

In the extra period, Brooklyn’s Thomas beat Martin on the baseline, and Royce O’Neale swished a right-wing trifecta after the Heat blitzed up top to take a five-point lead. Next, Herro canned a right-wing banger in transition (unbelievable he wasn’t tagged).

Subsequently, Bridges received the sideline inbound, dribbling past Richardson to the paint for a turnaround jumper. The Nets led 95-91.

On the following sequence, Herro made another at the top of the key 3-pointer on a broken play when multiple defenders unsuccessfully swarmed Adebayo at the nail. When the Nets got the ball back, Bridges charged into the paint against help for a vain floater that Claxton illegally touched.

Butler then isolated Dennis Smith Jr., drawing a foul en route to the cup and buried both. The Nets still had a timeout left, but coach Jacque Vaughn didn’t use it to advance the ball up the floor. Bridges got it back, challenging three defenders for a failing jumper.

The Heat won 96-95, making 37.9% of tries with 17 fastbreak points, four off second chances and eight via turnovers. Butler had 31 on his ledger on 67% shooting and 15 of 16 made freebies. Herro recorded 29 points on half of his attempts with 11 rebounds and assisted in the on-court interview.

“It wasn’t easy in the first half,” Herro said. “Not easy in the second half either, but to come in, regroup at halftime and come in and take care of business in the second half, that’s who we are and what we do, and it’s a great win for us on the second night [of a back-to-back].

At the postgame presser, coach Erik Spoelstra joked his team didn’t get the win out of the mud but instead cement. “You see that first half? That was about as ugly as it could get… So now that’s three games where we held our opponents under 100. Two out of the three have been in the mud, and that’s progress for our team.”

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The blossoming Orlando Magic’s defensive pressure put the Heat’s attack in the mud early and kept the game close the whole way. After Duncan Robinson seemingly unbuttoned the offense with consecutive triples against the drop and the Magic overhelping on Bam Adebayo in the post, the hosts endured five minutes recording just two field goals. But then Robinson set Adebayo up with a pick-and-pop jumper at the nail, and Josh Richardson scored the last two baskets of the first.

On the other side, Paolo Banchero rattled off seven points, Chuma Okeke stung from the corner, and Jalen Suggs ruined the Heat’s offense with help defense and three blocks on Robinson.

In the second quarter, Adebayo continued feeding cutters, and Jaime Jaquez Jr. abused each Magic defender in his path. The rook looked like a mini Kevin McHale, pivoting past them for a layup on the baseline, then breaking down Banchero from the top to the cup and finishing three baskets on the break with no misses in six tries.

Defensively, the Heat struggled to contain Moritz Wagner’s mobility (at 6-foot-11) after the switch, conceding the baseline, a rim roll and a putback. Additionally, Caleb Houstan poured in three triples- Jaquez couldn’t shade and recover on time after the screen and no one tagged him in transition after Nikola Jovic’s turnover. The one in between was nailed with Jović practically breathing on him.

At halftime, the hosts led 56-50, up on the glass by two, with 28 paint points, 12 on the break, eight off turnovers and five via second chances. Robinson had 14 on his scorecard on five of 11 attempts. Jaquez logged 15 on 70% shooting.

In the third quarter, both units upped their defensive pressure. The Heat quickly recovered onto Banchero on the wing to successfully contest his wing jumper, Jaquez forced him into an 11-foot miss on the baseline, and Adebayo, coming in as the helper, spiked his layup away. And the Magic permitted the Heat only six of 20 shots to fall. Adebayo registered three, attacking Goga Bitadze twice in the lane and cleaning up JJJ’s miss for a putback.

Next, coach Erik Spoelstra stashed Jović for Caleb Martin and Richardson. The Heat binged on baskets inside the arc (eight of 13), mainly behind the work of Adebayo schooling Wagner and Robinson getting into the lane with the help of the screen. But the squad committed four turnovers trying to pull off dangerous passes and losing it on the wing, blessing the Magic with extra possessions.

Wagner produced eight points on a rim roll, back door cut and pump-faking Adebayo at the top of the key to get inside for a layup.

Banchero scored 10 points on three of 10 tries late. With 39 seconds left, he dribbled to the right baseline, covered by Jaquez and hit a 15-footer to give the Magic a one-point advantage.

Following the Heat’s timeout, the Magic had one plan: get it to Banchero. The difference at the end was JJJ, Adebayo and Highsmith guarding his jumper and influencing misses on his last three attempts. And, at 18 seconds left, Adebayo caught the inbound and pulled up at the nail in front of Wagner to take the lead.

The Heat won 99-96, with an edge on the boards by three and taking one more field goal. Adebayo supplied 21 points with 11 rebounds and seven dimes. Robinson scored 23, making four of 10 trifectas. And JJJ had 19 points with seven rebounds.

At the on-court interview, Robinson said the games had a “grind it out” finish. “No matter if it’s pretty ugly or somewhere in between…[We] had some real stretches where we showed resolve and found a way to get out a win.”

At the postgame presser, when asked about Adebayo, Spoelstra said, “He had his fingerprints all over this game. Defensively, he was anchoring everything. We had him, sometimes on the five (center), sometimes on the perimeter. If he was on the perimeter, he was there to plug everything up…”

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Coach Erik Spoelstra is teasing the transition-starved fan base by using Nikola Jović as the playmaker during Jimmy Butler (toe injury) and Caleb Martin’s (ankle sprain) absence. The Serbian kid, who didn’t even have his high school diploma on draft night, is the best on the team at running the break and his tools create devastation on defense.

Early, Jović shot poorly, registering only one layup in the open court with three misses at close range and behind the arc. But he recovered seven rebounds, three of which were offensive, and set up Jaime Jaquez Jr. under the basket in transition, tipped a loose ball to Herro on the left side plus, used the dribble handoff at the top to create space for Herro and Duncan Robinson’s trifectas.

Vintage Kevin Love backed down Jae’Sean Tate, canned a 3-pointer behind a pindown and made two free throws, piling on to the Heat’s blazing first frame.

On the other side, the defense wasn’t as strong. Houston’s Fred VanVleet nailed a 25-footer with Jović, who is 11 inches taller, all over him, another at the left wing when Josh Richardson doubled to Alperen Şengün in the post and one at the elbow as Bam Adebayo dropped. Additionally, the club inflicted four of nine triples to start.

In the second quarter, the hosts could barely convert from deep but managed 12 free throw attempts and logged 67% of its two-pointers. In this period, the defense slipped, allowing six of 11 triples to fall.

At halftime, the game was tied at 59. The Heat were ahead by four on the glass, with 24 points coming in the paint, four off second chances and five off turnovers.

In the third quarter, Herro connected on three triples- one assisted by a Jović DHO on the left wing, a straight-away jumper at the top of the key, and another set up by Jović on the break. Adebayo was perfect on four paint shots. And Jović had his finest spurt of the season, hustling for loose balls to set up the break and pulling up for one trifecta.

On defense, despite permitting two deep looks that missed, the Heat contested two of seven triples cleanly.

The Heat entered the fourth quarter ahead by nine, and Adebayo’s production carried the group until the finish line. First, he contested Jabari Smith’s 3-pointer and was first in the open court, receiving the outlet pass from Robinson for a two-handed jam. He also hit a jumper at the nail, rolled to the rim for a layup between three defenders and swished four freebies.

Herro, Jaquez and Robinson each converted a tray in the fourth, too.

Defensively in the fourth, Smith was held to zero baskets in four tries covered by Adebayo, Richardson and Jaquez, forcing him into deep jumpers.

The Heat won 120-113, starting its four-game homestand. The group finished with 15 fastbreak points, 11 scored via second chance, and 13 off turnovers. In the half court, it scored 121.8 points per 100 possessions, good enough for the 95 percentile of all games this season, per Cleaning the Glass.

Adebayo was in charge with 22 points on 75% shooting with 12 rebounds. Jović finished with six points, eight rebounds, six assists, two steals and two blocks.

At the on-court interview, Adebayo said he was getting greedy about possibly making his third All-Star team. (He previously repped the East in 2020 and 2023.) “The biggest thing about it is improving and getting better. As you grow in this league and you got two All-Star [appearances], you want three, you want four, you want five. So you just keep that mentality.”

At the postgame presser, Spoelstra said Jović was “really good” in his minutes. “I don’t know what his stat line was, but he was able to generate a lot of easy opportunities for us in the open court…”

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HBO canceled its show Winning Time in September because of a 40% drop in viewership and has refused to answer who the intended audience was. Remember that the Lakers team shown in the program is between 45 and 40 years old (the show’s story ends in 1984). The network also didn’t answer what made them think the public would be interested in the stories of a group that age when the NBA has recently added an In-Season Tournament because it wants to “drive additional interest in the early portion of the regular-season schedule.”

That’s code for the NBA is not satisfied with its number of spectators.

Additionally, HBO PR chiefs Raina Falcon and Diego Aldana did not answer what impact the criticisms of former Lakers had on the show. Magic Johnson, Norm Nixon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and more spoke negatively about Winning Time any chance they could when the show went lite on their reputations in comparison to Jeff Pearlman’s book, Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, it is based on. Interestingly, no one is discrediting Pearlman’s writing, and he spoke with close to 300 people for the assignment.

In the summer of 2023, during the SAG-AFTRA strike, cast members of Winning Time could not promote the program. Still, Pearlman, who even had a cameo as a journalist in one episode in season two, did futilely on X(formerly Twitter) as much as possible.

Johnson told reporters he “never watched” HBO’s “fictional” account and that no one could tell the story. Yet, the scenes from the show of him working out with Pat Riley to recover from his knee injury come from his 1983 memoir (published at age 23) Magic by himself and Richard Levin.

Abdul-Jabbar said it was boring because of bland, crude characterizations and compared it to gossip-mongering on the Real Housewives in his Substack writing page.

Nixon said it wasn’t true and that he never had issues with Johnson, as a guest on the Skyhook podcast with Michael Cooper and Abdul-Jabbar. His son, DeVaughn, portrayed him on the show.

In later interviews, he criticized Johnson for his tight bond with Buss, saying he couldn’t hang out so frequently with the owner and then with the team, but never mentioned that he partied with both as well. (At the peculiar press conference introducing Pat Riley as Lakers coach, Buss revealed that he was going to a birthday party with Johnson and Nixon.)

Gary Vitti chose not to return after two days of consulting in protest of Jerry West’s portrayal.

Riley just walked by and said “no” when asked by reporters at Miami Heat training camp if he liked Adrien Brody’s interpretation of him.

Jeanie Buss, who tried to get the show canceled before it aired, said she thought no one had a right to tell the Lakers’ story in her interview with Graham Bensinger. “We tried for a couple of years [to shut down the show. We] really leaned on the corporate lawyers, and I thought they would be able to stop it. The explanation given to me is that it’s protected under first amendment rights…”

Despite early objections to production and material in the program, Jeanie Buss admires the performance of John C. Reilly as her father, calling it “absolutely breathtaking as [Jerry Buss].

Here’s the deal: The show took many liberties, bothering and hurting some of those who lived it, especially West, who even pursued legal action, demanding a retraction and apology from HBO. The Network denied both.

In reality, West didn’t throw his trophy out of a window. Johnson didn’t storm off the court after his altercation with coach Paul Westhead. Jack Kent Cooke was not that unfriendly towards Jerry Buss. Bill Sharman couldn’t raise his voice that high, then. Claire Rothman did not unbutton her shirt to flatter Buss’ eye. And Buss was more sensitive than his portrayal, despite showing mainly his cavalier side, plus many other things.

But it was never a documentary and there is a disclaimer that it is a dramatization.

Still, Johnson is the luckiest that Winning Time was canceled and didn’t follow Pearlman’s book 100% to the text. Here’s an excerpt of Frank Brickowski describing his mansion parties in Chapter 13- Virginal: “He would have the finest girls in LA there. The absolute finest. And at midnight you had to get busy with somebody or get the fuck out. So, if you were a guy, at midnight you’d get as close as you could to the hottest possible woman. Magic went around in this voyeuristic way. He’d check on you. He’d go throughout the house, the pool. He’d order people to start doing things. All you had to do is be near a chick. There were guys who would yell, ‘Magic, she’s not getting busy! She’s not!’ He’d run over there and she’d get busy…”

Furthermore, in one scene of the show in Episode One, The Swan, Abdul-Jabbar is shown telling his child co-star of the film Airplane to “Fuck off.” He denied this in his blog or ever mouthing off to any minor. However, Linda Rambis, executive director of special projects with the Lakers, is on the record in Chapter 4- Center of Complications in Pearlman’s book saying, “Some little kid would ask for an autograph and he’d say, ‘Go fuck yourself.’ But Kareem was, otherwise, an incredible professional.”

But Rothman, the former general manager of the Forum, now retired at 95 years old, said to Five Reasons Sports Network that Winning Time was unfair to its subjects but that it was closer to realism in the second season.

Regarding Buss, Rothman said the show did not accurately depict the dimension of the man. “He was an avid reader who read two or three books a week. He loved theater. He loved symphony. He loved ballet.”

He was also receptive to the ideas of his employees. For example, Rothman once asked for a raise. She wrote him a memo explaining how underpaid she was compared to people from all over the country who did similar work, but he never read the second page. Two weeks later, Buss summoned her to his Pickfair mansion for a business lunch. There, he obliged her wishes and gave her a $100,000 raise on the condition that she couldn’t ask for another next year.

Buss also got involved as a donor to The Music Center in LA. Rothman was on the board at the time. She and others who were closely around him were dispirited by the direction of his character because they agreed Buss wasn’t one to disrespect another publicly.

Concerning the interpretation of Abdul-Jabbar, Rothman said it was stupid.

Rothman was appalled by West’s “unkind” depiction, too. She had a friendly relationship with him when she worked at the Forum, but he never interfered with her business. His priorities were basketball matters, and the one time they discussed anything in her field was in a brief comment about Barbera Streisand not coming to perform at the Forum, according to Rothman.

She said there weren’t enough moments that showed his softer side. Towards the end of Pearlman’s book, he does showcase West’s generosity, taking his colleagues out to dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steak House while providing them with laughs.

And she was sickened by the scene of her character undoing her hair and then the top buttons of her shirt.

Pearlman said in an interview on The Rich Eisen Show that Winning Time wasn’t a documentary, but he understands the frustration of those portrayed, and that he has no issues with the characterization, particularly West, because it is in line with his autobiography, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life. “It’s sort of true to the tortured and tormented soul that he was.”

He would add in his interview with Eisen that West “was combustible, highly strung, couldn’t watch his team…”

Jeanie Buss wasn’t interested in helping HBO after she saw the script for episode one. She sent a copy of it to Rothman, who, in solidarity, wouldn’t participate either.

In 2022, the same year as Winning Time’s first season, the Lakers publicized their show Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers. It is a 10-part docuseries directed and produced by Antonie Fuqua. Jeanie Buss was also an executive producer.

The first four episodes cover the Showtime Lakers era, and some of the interviews shown validate Pearlman’s book.

In the first episode of Legacy, West, a program volunteer, said, “Coaching for me was a difficult chore. I am an emotional person, and sometimes, I don’t hide that very well.”

He also mentions feeling sad for the players who competed for him from 1976-79.

The following episode explains the awkward press conference when Buss announced that West and Pat Riley would be in charge of the offense and defense post firing of coach Westhead. Jeanie Buss described it as tone-setting for their working relationship because her father wanted to be known as a decision-maker. The team’s former public relations director, Bruce Jolesch, is quoted in Pearlman’s book, saying, “We put on a clinic on how not to conduct a press conference.”

In the same episode of Legacy, West says that he didn’t think Nixon was a good compliment to Johnson in the back court, but the two of them were arguably the top guard pairing in the NBA. Johnson wrote in his memoir that he told Buss that Nixon was the top guard choice he’d like to play with because “his quickness adds a dimension to my game that nobody else can.”

According to Pearlman, West booted Nixon from the team the because he saw him as an issue. He hired a private investigator to try to identify a drug problem to justify his cause.

With Winning Time’s cancellation, the opportunity was wasted by HBO (unless the rights to the program are bought and another studio continues) for the show to continue the dramatized story of Showtime or even one of the following duos- the Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant era from Pearlman’s Laker follow up, Three Ring Circus: Kobe, Shaq, Phil and the Crazy Years of the Lakers Dynasty.

West, Jeanie Buss, Nixon and Pearlman didn’t want to speak for this story.