Heat Puts Pistons on Brink

The Miami Heat handed the Detroit Pistons a particularly painful loss Tuesday night.

Grant Hill, hurting so badly that he could no longer play, hopped to the bench early in the third quarter and kicked the back of a chair in frustration.

And when Jamal Mashburn made an eight-footer with six seconds left, Miami won, 84-82, to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five series.

Game 3 is Saturday at Detroit.

“We’re in a heck of a hole that Miami has created,” Piston Coach George Irvine said. “We’ve got to claw our way out.”

The Heat won despite blowing a six-point lead in the final 2:08. Detroit’s last chance ended when Jerry Stackhouse slipped driving to the basket and lost the ball, which Miami’s Dan Majerle recovered as time expired.

“I feel sick,” Stackhouse said. “I thought I had a clear path to the basket so I tried to attack it. Then I backed out for a jump shot and I slipped.”

Hill started but played less than four minutes in the second half because of a bone bruise in his left foot that has bothered him since late in the regular season. He scored nine points in 21 minutes.

“I felt something pop,” Hill said. He was to undergo an MRI exam today when the team returned to Detroit.

All five Heat starters scored in double figures to overcome Tim Hardaway’s absence and foul trouble that hampered Mashburn, Alonzo Mourning and P.J. Brown.

Mashburn scored 24 points and Mourning had 22. Rookie Anthony Carter, again coolly filling in for Hardaway, had 10 points and 13 assists, a Heat franchise playoff record. Hardaway missed his second consecutive game because of a sore left foot.

“It was a great game, and we’ll take it,” Coach Pat Riley said. “Offensively we did just enough to win.”

Stackhouse led Detroit with 26 points.

Meanwhile, about 125 people demonstrated near the arena before the game to protest the Elian Gonzalez case, but despite a general strike called by Cuban Americans, there were few no-shows in the announced crowd of 16,500.