Carter’s Shot Puts Heat Over Top

Only Pat Riley can consider a game in which his team shot 36.5%--its second consecutive sub-40% shooting performance--a thing of beauty.

The Miami Heat’s 77-76 overtime victory over the New York Knicks Friday at Madison Square Garden was work, not a work of art. But it didn’t have to be pretty to give the Heat a 2-1 edge in the Eastern Conference semifinal series. It only had to be a product of perseverance and, perhaps, a bit of luck.

Heat reserve guard Anthony Carter’s desperate, leaping fling, which soared over the top corner of the backboard, bounced off the rim and fell through with 2.2 seconds left in overtime, was initially waved off by referee Dan Crawford because he believed Alonzo Mourning had illegally tipped it in. However, fellow referees Hue Hollins and Bob Delaney overruled him and let the basket stand.

“Alonzo didn’t touch the ball,” Carter said. “The shot took a great bounce.”

When Charlie Ward’s subsequent inbounds pass to Latrell Sprewell was tipped away, the Heat had, remarkably, triumphed over the combined effects of a hostile Garden crowd, Tim Hardaway’s continued ineffectiveness and foul trouble that kept Mourning on the bench for most of the third quarter.

“I thought it was a beautiful game. It was an absolutely beautiful game,” Riley said after the Heat balanced its playoff record at New York at 4-4 over four playoff series. “It was hard-fought. It was contested. We know each other well, and that’s why there’s not a lot of points.”

Knick Coach Jeff Van Gundy had a point to make, strongly disapproving of the referees’ final decision on Carter’s shot.

“It was definitely from behind the backboard. They got the right call for the wrong reason,” he said. “He called it for goaltending, which it wasn’t. But it was shot from behind the backboard and it should have been out of bounds on the side.”

Said Crawford: “We feel it was the correct no-call. We saw that shot and we didn’t dream that the ball came directly over the backboard. . . . I think we’re all in position. We looked at the replay and we still don’t think that it came over the backboard.”

Yet, Van Gundy knew the game should not have come down to that, not with the home-court advantage and not with Allan Houston and Latrell Sprewell breaking the shackles that held them in the first two games to 24 and 23 points, respectively.

And not after the Knicks, who had tied the score with 2.6 seconds left in the fourth quarter on a 17-foot jump shot by Patrick Ewing, built a 75-71 lead with 2:15 left in overtime.

“They got up and into us and we became a little tentative,” Van Gundy said. “We obviously didn’t play as well as we would have liked, but in the end we needed one stop and one rebound and whether we got it or not, I don’t know. But you’ve got to give Carter a lot of credit.”

Carter played the last 22 minutes and 35 minutes overall in place of Hardaway. He had 10 points, seven rebounds and eight assists, and committed only one turnover. “Carter played the game of his young life,” Riley said.

Said Carter: “You never know who’s going to go down, and you just have to step up.”

Mourning, who had 23 points, was surprised not only that the shot dropped, but that Carter took it at all.

“Little fellow that he is, he has come up big for us a couple of times this year,” Mourning said. “This was definitely a big shot and it’s amazing now it had to come to something like this.”

He said he wasn’t tempted to tip the shot. “I was looking at it and I saw the bounce and I knew it wasn’t bouncing this way,” he said, “so I just pulled my hand back. . . . I was prepared to dunk it back in, but he just made a great shot. That was a giant killer.”

If not a killer, then at least a wound. The Heat’s bench outscored the Knicks’ bench, 21-6, and the Heat outrebounded the Knicks for the third successive game.

“We have to play much better. We have to rebound the ball better,” Ewing said. “We’ve just got to play a better all-around game.

“I would have loved to have won the game, but we have never done anything easy around here. We’ve always had to push it to the limit, and we just have to pick ourselves up and get ready for Sunday.”