Butler, Adebayo Lead Heat To 114-99 Victory Over Hornets
MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) –Jimmy Butler scored 32 points, Bam Adebayo had 26 points and 19 rebounds on the night his Olympic gold-medalist banner was unveiled and the Miami Heat held on late to beat the Charlotte Hornets 114-99 on Friday night.
Tyler Herro scored 26 points off the bench for Miami, which wasted most of a 26-point first-half lead.
Duncan Robinson added 10 for Miami. The Heat outrebounded Charlotte 60-37.
Gordon Hayward scored 23 points and Miles Bridges had 22 for Charlotte.
Kelly Oubre Jr. scored 17 points and Cody Martin had 15 for the Hornets, while LaMelo Ball struggled through a 2-for-14 night from the floor.
Miami came into the game — in terms of points per game — with the NBA's top defense, Charlotte with the league's top offense.
Defense prevailed, with Charlotte shooting just 39%.
The Heat were 19 for 19 from the line for the second time this season.
Miami had gone 19 for 19 or better only twice in its first 33 seasons. It has now done it two more times in a span of five days.
Miami was 190-1 over the last 25 seasons in games where it led by at least 26 points.
The only 26-point lead that was blown by the Heat in that span was one at Boston in a regular-season finale in April 2016.
The record is 191-1 now, though it didn't come easily.
Charlotte had three chances midway through the third to get the lead down to single-digits and went 0 for 3 on the possession, with Oubre missing from in close and Ball misfiring on two short jumpers.
Butler scored at the other end to put Miami up 13 and after another stop, Herro made a 3-pointer with 4:07 left in the period to push the lead back to 76-60.
The Hornets were undeterred.
They closed the third on a 15-8 run, getting the margin down to 84-75 going into the fourth.
And they got within 88-82 early in the fourth, before a 7-0 Heat spurt provided Miami with some much-needed cushion.
TIP-INS
Hornets: The Heat left a press-row seat, decorated with a bouquet of flowers, open in memory of longtime Hornets beat writer Rick Bonnell of the Charlotte Observer.
Bonnell died in June. ... In no surprise, the Hornets exercised their third-year option on Ball and their fourth-year option on P.J. Washington.
Heat: Robinson has at least one 3-pointer in 53 consecutive games, four shy of matching his career-best streak -- which is also the team record. ... DJ Khaled was at the game, celebrating his son Asahd's fifth birthday. Asahd got serenaded by some in the crowd at halftime.
FASTEST TO 100
Herro is up to 110 points in the season's first five games.
He is the first Heat player to score at least 100 off the bench so quickly into a season; Goran Dragic (2019-20) and Tyler Johnson (2016-17) both got there in the seventh game of a season.
DOWN DOUBLES, AGAIN
Charlotte, despite its 4-2 start, hasn't made matters particularly easy on itself in the first six games.
The Hornets have trailed by double digits in every game this season, the 26-point deficit against Miami on Friday being the largest.
They've overcome deficits of 23 (vs. Indiana), 12 (vs. Orlando), 11 (vs. Cleveland), and 10 (vs. Brooklyn) to win already this season.
UP NEXT
Hornets: Host Portland on Sunday.
Heat: Visit Memphis on Saturday.
(© Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
