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Ray Allen’s late three-pointer lifts Heat past Nuggets

The Miami Heat’s LeBron James passes the ball to Ray Allen in the final seconds of the fourth quarter against the Denver Nuggets at the AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, Florida, on Saturday, November 3, 2012. Allen converted the pass into a four-point play to secure a 119-116 Miami win.

By Ira Winderman, Sun Sentinel –

MIAMI — For most of the night, the third option practically turned into the only option.

This time, Chris Bosh was second to none.

This time he had to be. And it still wasn’t enough.

At least not until Ray Allen reminded everyone of his own ageless possibilities.

With Allen converting a four-point play with 6.7 seconds to play, the Miami Heat held off the Denver Nuggets 119-116 Saturday night at AmericanAirlines Arena.

“We found a way to grind it out,” coach Erik Spoelstra said.

Typically, when you get a 40-point game from a player, as the Heat did from Bosh, you don’t find yourself in a grind-out game.

But this was no typical Heat game, not with defense taking a holiday.

“That was a little more circa 1980 NBA, with the tempo both ways,” Spoelstra said. “We clearly did not play how we wanted to play defensively, consistently.”

So even after Bosh shot 15 of 22 from the field and 9 of 10 from the foul line to eclipse his previous Heat high of 35 points, the Heat still needed one more play from some other than their center.

And they knew they had the player to make that play.

Or at least forward LeBron James did.

Criticized so many other times in his career when he deferred, James this time attacked the paint and then fed Allen deep in the left corner.

Three-pointer.

Whistle.

Foul.

Allen free throw.

A four-point play and ultimately salvation, the Heat avoiding falling below .500 for just the second time in the Big Three era.

“It was a great find by ‘Bron,” guard Dwyane Wade said after his quiet 14-point night. “But no one shoots better in the deep, deep corner that Ray.”

To a degree, this was the exact type of moment that so intrigued Allen about signing with the Heat.

James with the ball. Defenders forced to pick their poison.

“Coming out of the time out, the situation with LeBron having the ball in his hands, they’ve got to figure out what they’re going to do to stop him,” Allen said. “I just tried to keep relocating.

“I got to the corner, (Corey) Brewer helped, and turned his head one split second, and LeBron found me. My guy had to make a choice. It worked out in my favor.”

The veteran guard said it was the first time he had converted a four-point play to win a game.

“And I was thinking, as I stepped up to the free-throw line, ‘Please make this free throw. It’ll be a better story to tell.’ “

Of course, without Bosh’s contribution, such a story never could have been written.

“They couldn’t stop him,” teammate Rashard Lewis said.

No, they couldn’t, and Bosh knew it.

“The opportunities were there and I felt it,” he said.

Spoelstra said there was no plan going in for such Bosh domination.

“That developed as the game went on, and that’s part of the team IQ, to be able to read games,” Spoelstra said. “A lot of those were reads that the players were making and he was a recipient at the ends of plays.”

Factor in 20 points, 11 assists and nine rebounds from James and the Heat survived on a night they were outscored 72-40 in the paint and outrebounded 46-33.

“We’ll get better,” Spoelstra said. “We know we have to get better defensively.”

Even with Bosh at his Heat best, it took a pair of Allen 3-pointers to tie it 101-101 with 6:10 to play. To that point, there had been 16 lead changes and eight ties amid the can-you-top this explosiveness.

Allen later missed on an opportunity to tie it at 108 on an open 3-point look, but Bosh later slipped a screen for an inside score for a 109-108 Heat lead.

The Nuggets later appeared to move to a 113-111 lead with two minutes to play, but a basket initially credited as a Danilo Gallinari 3-pointer was changed upon video review to a two-pointer and a 112-111 Denver lead.

James then scored inside to put the Heat up 113-112. Off a loose-ball scramble, Bosh then found Wade for a breakaway layup and a 115-112 Heat lead with 67 seconds left.

But, later, after an Andre Iguodala 20-foot pull-up jumper with 14.1 seconds to play, the Nuggets went up 116-115.

That set up Allen’s heroics, with the Heat surviving the Nuggets’ final attempts.

“We’ve been on the other end as the recipient of that type of pain,” Spoelstra said, “when he puts a dagger to your heart.”

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