The Hornets pull out all their tricks in Game 5

12:00 AM ET

Charlotte has taken three straight from the reeling Heat mostly because its defense has held Miami to a pitiful 89 points per 100 possessions over the past three games.

Miami was never going to keep up the fiery pace it established during its first two wins, when point guard Goran Dragic was canning step-back 3s and rookie Justise Winslow, getting damn near the Tony Allen treatment, drained some long jumpers. The Heat just don’t have enough shooting when any three of Dragic, Dwyane Wade, Luol Deng and Winslow are on the floor, and things get tight when only two of them are out there.

Scoring is hard work for the Heat, even when they make it look easy. The Heat have to the run the floor hard and pluck the low-hanging fruit of transition points. In the halfcourt, any smart opposing defense will clog the paint to snuff out Miami’s first option; on bad nights, the Heat have to drive-and-kick their way through options two, three and four to scrounge a clean look. When they’re a little weary, as they appeared in Game 4, they won’t score enough to win.

Charlotte has cleaned up some of the errors it made in Games 1 and 2, adjusted to Miami’s weirdo baseline cutting, and played with manic intensity. Down by a point with about 1 minute, 40 seconds left in Game 5, Charlotte put together one of the best defensive possessions of the playoffs — all five guys zipping around the floor to contain the fallout from a Wade-Josh Richardson pick-and-roll, nailing every rotation clean until Richardson had to barf up a long contested triple. It was the sort of defensive possession you practice and drill all season to have in your bag when it counts.

But all that focused effort wouldn’t have mattered as much had the Hornets not gradually found ways to poke at Miami’s pick-and-roll defense, centered on the gigantic Hassan Whiteside. Miami’s game plan from the outset of Game 1 was clear: chase Kemba Walker, Jeremy Lin and Nicolas Batum over screens closely …

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