Dwyane Wade scored 19 of his 33 points in the fourth quarter, and the Miami Heat rallied from a 10-point deficit midway through the final quarter to beat the New Jersey Nets 99-94 on Monday night.
Michael Beasley scored 19 points and Daequan Cook added 15 for the Heat, who are 3-0 at home for the first time since the 1999-2000 season — and had to dig deep to get there, after the Nets seemed to have the game completely under control for much of the second half.
Yi Jianlian made a career-best five 3-pointers and finished with 24 points and 10 rebounds for the Nets, who got 22 points from Vince Carter. New Jersey led by 10 after Carter connected on a 3-pointer — one of 13 by the Nets — with 5:48 left, but got outscored 26-11 the rest of the way.
Carter's layup with 32.5 seconds left drew New Jersey within one, but Wade calmly made a 15-footer from the right side 9 seconds later, and the Heat held on from there.
Down by three, New Jersey had one more chance, but Carter was called from traveling with 6.7 seconds left — the Nets' 19th turnover — and the outcome was sealed. Chris Quinn went 6-for-6 from the line in the final seconds for Miami.
Former Heat guard Keyon Dooling scored 18 points for New Jersey, which also got 12 from Jarvis Hayes and 11 from Bobby Simmons.
Yi's 3-point barrage had to have caught Miami by surprise. Entering Monday, in his first 71 NBA appearances, Yi had never made more than two 3-pointers in a game.
He then made three in a 3½-minute span of the third quarter alone.
Yi's newly found long-range game fueled a quick 16-5 burst by the Nets, who saw a one-point lead transformed into a 64-52 advantage with 3:31 left in the period. And after Carter connected on — what else? — another 3-pointer over Wade's outstretched arm with 5:48 left, the Nets had what seemed like a perfectly comfortable 83-73 lead.
Someone forgot to tell Wade it was over.
He scored eight straight points in a 79-second span, starting with a 3-pointer that banked in off the glass and left him shaking his head in disbelief. A pair of free throws and another 3-pointer — this one swished — later, and the Heat were at 85-84 with 3:09 remaining.
After being on the other end of the Hack-a-Shaq for so long when Shaquille O'Neal was with Miami, the Heat went to the Hack-a-Boone and sent the Nets' notoriously bad foul-shooting Josh Boone to the line with 3:03 left, shortly after Boone airballed one from the stripe.
He made one of two, and when Cook drove the lane for a layup with 2:05 left, the game was tied at 86.
Wade made a pair of free throws with 1:07 left, giving Miami its first lead since the opening seconds of the second half, and the Heat never trailed again.
Notes:@ The Nets were again without point guard Devin Harris, who missed his second straight game with a sprained left ankle. Miami played with Shawn Marion in street clothes because of a sore groin sustained in Saturday's loss at New Orleans. ... Heat guard Mario Chalmers took a shot to the nose in the first quarter and played a bit with cotton packed in his left nostril. ... Wade's mother, Jolinda, sat in a seat along one of the baselines, next to her daughter Tragil.
