Who turned off the heat??
May 18th, 2012 | By love not hate
There was a rending, tearing sound to this Heat loss, like when you hear seams ripping apart, or seasons slipping away. There was a frustration that boiled over in the third quarter as a team dreaming of an NBA championship was helpless to stop its own collapse. Coach Erik Spoelstra approached Dwyane Wade during a timeout, as if to place his hand on the player’s shoulder. “Get out of my [expletive] face!” Wade snapped. This is the state of the Heat today — angry, beaten and wondering what to do now — after Thursday night’s 94-75 loss that gave the Indiana Pacers a 2-1 lead in this best-of-7, second-round series. Spoelstra downplayed the outburst by Wade, like you knew he would. “That happens,” the coach said. “That really is nothing. That’s the least of our concerns.” If so, that, too, is indicative of a team reeling and seemingly at a loss for answers. Wade’s frustration was understandable after perhaps the worst night of his stellar career. Has anyone seen Dwyane Tyrone Wade Jr.? Black male, 6-3. D.O.B 1-17-82. No visible tattoos but often seen wearing a No. 3 basketball jersey. Mr. Wade is missing. His shots are, anyway. And largely because of that, it now looks as if his team is in jeopardy of disappearing from these playoffs as surely as his shooting touch has. Everything was collapsing all around Wade here Thursday. A game. A series. A season. Maybe everything. And the most beloved player in the franchise’s 24 seasons was helpless to stop it. You kept waiting, right? You filed away Wade’s scoreless first half — the first of his playoff career — as some sort of bizarre aberration and kept expecting the second-half burst, the run, the shots to start dropping, and D-Wade to be D-Wade again, muting the enemy crowd, lifting his team. Nothing. This critical loss isn’t Wade’s alone but it is his foremost, after the whisper of an astonishing five-point performance on dismal 2-for-13 shooting. “It was a bad night,” he said. “There were a lot of reasons for it. I just didn’t have it going.” Wade still was simmering following the game. He was asked if he had anything to say about the courtside outburst. “No,” he said. It wasn’t just Thursday that led to Wade’s frustration overload. Wade shot poorly from the field in the first two games as well, and his series totals are now 18 shots made in 58 attempts, or barely 30 percent. Wade wasn’t himself Thursday, so Mario Chalmers played Wade instead, scoring a game-high 25 points while his mentor missed and stewed, stewed and missed. Wade has been the hero plenty for Miami over the years. Miami needs him to be again. Desperately, now. If LeBron James were shooting as awfully as Wade is in this series, he would be on a national rotisserie, being turned slowly by a hungrily salivating media brandishing sharp knives. Wade tends to get a pass because even he is eclipsed now by the shadow of James, the league MVP. But Wade’s shoulders are broad enough and his skin thick enough to take the truth: His poor shooting is costing Miami about as dearly right now as the injury absence of Chris Bosh. “He’s one of the best players in the world,” James, who scored 22 Thursday, said of Wade. “When you have a game like that you just move on to the next one.”
Last year, Eagles running back 
Tragic: Eight of the 45 players who took the San Diego Chargers to Super Bowl XXIX have died before age 45
Center Curtis Whitley struggled with drug abuse for years before dying of a drug overdose in 2008 at age 39
Mugshot: Caleb King has a history of off-field troubles that began when he was a High School star at three
Team: King 
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