The Miami Heat kicked off 2012 with a dominant performance against the Charlotte Bobcats, walking away with the 129-90 victory on Jan. 1.

The Heat took control in the very first quarter of the second encounter between the two teams this season, building up an 18 point lead in the opening twelve minutes. Miami kept their pace up in the second quarter, increasing their lead to 28 points by halftime. The Heat continued their dominance in the second half of the game, handing the Bobcats their most lopsided loss of the season.

Miami’s offense was firing on all cylinders against the Bobcats, shooting 60 percent from the field. The Heat were even more successful from beyond the arc, converting on 64 percent of their attempts from long range.

Forward Chris Bosh led Miami against the Bobcats, shooting 69 percent from the field. Bosh finished with the only double-double of the game, putting up 24 points and 10 rebounds against the Bobcats.

Dwyane Wade was the second highest scorer for the Heat, putting up 22 points, 6 assists and 3 rebounds. LeBron James had his lowest scoring game of the 2011/12 NBA season, but he was still effective for the Heat, shooting 60 percent from the field and finishing with 16 points, 9 rebounds and 5 assists.

Mario Chalmers was lights out from beyond the arc, going 4-4 from long range. Chalmers missed only one shot against the Bobcats, walking away with 16 points and 5 assists.

Miami’s bench had their best performance of the season against the Bobcats, finishing with a combined 43 points and 17 rebounds.

Rookie Norris Cole had another solid outing for Miami, putting up 16 points (shooting 75 percent from the field), 9 assists and 3 steals. Udonis Haslem also gave the Heat some quality minutes coming off the bench, finishing with six points and nine rebounds.

Miami’s next game will be against the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 2, and they should be able to keep their undefeated record intact.

David is a Miami Heat fan that has followed the team for 16 years. Follow him on twitter @davidkingwriter and check out his blog.

Sources:

Player and game information from ESPN.com

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Playing LeBron James any day of the year is enough to make most opponents break out in cold sweats in the middle of the night.

Be one of the unfortunate teams to get a game against King James on his birthday, and you know you’re in for a long night.

James turned a ripe old 27 on Friday, and the Miami Heat star says he always plays with a little extra juice on his birthday.

“My birthday and my mom’s birthday are the two days I feel real, real good about playing basketball,” James said on Friday morning after the team’s shootaround. “I’ve had the luxury of having games on my birthday and my mom’s birthday so we’ll see what happens.”

That could be bad news for the Minnesota Timberwolves. The undefeated Heat play at Target Center in the fifth time in James’ nine seasons that he has played on his birthday.

In four previous birthday games, James has averaged 35.3 points, 7.8 rebounds and 5.0 assists. He’s also shot 55 percent from the field and 45 percent from 3-point range.

So what gets into him on those days?

“You know my birthday when I turned 15 or I turned 9, when I was growing up, it wasn’t the best of days on my birthday,” he said. “To see where I am today, and to be able to turn 21 and be in the NBA and turn 22 and now turn 27 and be a part of this league, it’s a testament. It’s also I’m very humbled that I am able to be here and I’m very blessed.”

James’ best birthday performance came in 2009 when he had 48 points, 10 rebounds and six assists in a victory over Atlanta while he was still with the Cleveland Cavaliers. That’s also the only time he’s headed home for his birthday cake with a victory.

James had 38 points and seven assists in a loss to Miami in 2008, 33 points and nine boards against Chicago in 2006 and 22 points, 10 rebounds and four assists in a loss to Indiana as a rookie in 2003.

“It’s amazing how many games he gets on his birthday, I’ll tell you that,” Heat star Dwyane Wade said. “He’s had a lot of games on his birthday. The schedule works that way.”

James is playing some of the best basketball of his career early this season for the Heat, who are coming off a disappointing NBA finals loss to the Dallas Mavericks last season. He’s averaging 32.7 points, 7.3 rebounds and 6.0 assists in his first three games, and has developed a low-post game to boot.

“He’s been playing exceptionally well,” Wade said. “He’s in a different mind state right now. I expect him to continue the mind state he’s in.

“You can’t always know what that is going to result to, but he always enjoys certain moments. It’s a special moment when you get an opportunity to play on this day. The biggest thing is to try to come out and lead us to a win.”

James said the best birthday present he ever received was the Hummer SUV his mother bought him when he turned 18.

The Timberwolves had their own birthday treat for James when they shut down guard J.J. Barea for the game with a strained right hamstring. The super-quick Barea hurt the Heat in the NBA finals last season and was a major reason the Mavs were able to pull off the upset.

Asked if he will miss chasing Barea around, James didn’t hesitate: “Absolutely not.”

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Follow Jon Krawczynski on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/APkrawczynski.

By Jim Litke, Associated Press

That deflating sound you hear is the suspense beginning to leak out of the NBA season.

Yes, it’s only a few days old, but a fifth of the schedule has already been erased by the lockout and if Miami figures out how to attack zone defenses, it’s over. No team is going to beat the Heat then. In the opener they blew out a Dallas team that came back to steal the finals by gumming up Miami’s offensive machine with a zone. On Tuesday night, they outlasted a Boston team that deployed the same defense in the second half to avoid getting run out of the gym. Though the Celtics clawed back within three points at the 2-minute mark, in the eight quarters the Heat have played, they’ve trailed for only 14 seconds. Get used to it.

Miami has already fixed the problems that were so apparent when LeBron James and his super sidekicks, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, made their debut together against Boston to kick off the 2010 season. They can play sustained, ferocious defense and they’re even more opportunistic — and spectacular — than they were in transition by the end of last season. Even so, Miami coach Eric Spoelstra used some of his free time during the lockout to pick the brains of some of the country’s best coaches — Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Kentucky’s John Calipari and Oregon football coach Chip Kelly, who runs a particularly hectic version of the no-huddle spread offense — looking for ways to rev up Miami’s attack. The lessons appear to have taken. The faster pace and extra space on the floor means more room for James, Wade and Bosh to take advantage of individual matchups, which plays into Miami’s strength.

Celtics coach Doc Rivers didn’t need to consult the scoreboard at halftime to convince him of that. He watched the finals, saw how well a zone worked for the Mavericks, and despite a commitment to man-to-man defense from the outset of his NBA career, began working on the scheme over the summer. Boston unveiled its version in the third quarter, while the Heat stood around and settled for jumpers, and the Celtics slowly climbed back into the game. An 18-6 run over the final 6 minutes of the period — Miami helpfully misfired on its last eight shots — brought the Celtics to 91-83. That margin seemed comfortable enough, though, until former Heat guard Keyon Dooling scored seven straight points to cut it to 108-105 with 2:02 left.

By Tom Ziller

– NBA Editor

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Dec 26, 2011 – At no point in the 2010-11 season did the Miami Heat look like that. The Heat had mammoth wins, brilliant performances, artful offensive assaults in the debut season of the LeBron James-Dwyane Wade-Chris Bosh triptych, but never did the Heat so thoroughly ruin a great team on the road on such a bright stage. The closest match is the Heat’s Christmas 2010 win over the Lakers in Los Angeles; that game was most notable for Chris Bosh crushing L.A.’s frontline.

This was different. This was a full-court assault by the Heat’s superior athletes that refused to allow the older, more craft than splash Dallas Mavericks to breathe. With Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Kidd and Shawn Marion, the Mavericks never exactly look young. But they looked like a club you’d find at the Coral Gables YMCA against the new racing Heat. Any questions about whether the preseason talk about the Heat’s new up-tempo offense was just hype were excused for now. It’s real, and it made the Mavericks look awful.

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SI.com: Heat Convincing In Victory

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Tom Haberstroh wrote a detailed analysis on the creation and early evolution of the Heat’s new offense last week. Erik Spoelstra, the Heat’s young and curious coach, visited Eugene, Oreg., to watch Chip Kelly’s Oregon Ducks work through their infamous spread offense. Spoelstra and his staff began translating it for basketball, focusing on using space and speed to create opportunities and mismatches. IT WORKED. The Heat played an up-tempo game — each team had 100 possessions; in 2010-11, the Heat averaged 90 per game and the Mavericks were at 91. They attacked the rim, which made the selection on the team’s long shots look a lot better.

The Heat scored 31 points on the break and 44 points in the paint. Add in the team’s 25 made free throws (15 of them from LeBron) and 69 of the Heat’s 105 points were scored at the rim or at the stripe, where free throws usually come on interior plays. That’s simply terrifying: the Heat look to be abandoning their long-jumper identity — one in which transition played a useful role but came too infrequently — in favor of something like an eternal invasion. They never stopped coming at the Mavs, not until they were up by 35 and called it a night.

The Heat have another down-tempo test on Tuesday: the Boston Celtics. We know Miami can bludgeon Boston in the half-court — we saw in the playoffs last season. But if the Heat can do to the Celtics’ still-stout defense what they did to the Mavericks, the NBA is in real trouble.

WARRIORS ON THE BRINK

The Golden State Warriors are in a terrible position. Stephen Curry, the third-year guard, is the team’s best player and best hope for a win any given night. Monta Ellis is a great scorer and a good passer, but Curry’s superior efficiency and court vision make him a much more valuable player. Curry, however, is injured. He turned an ankle on a Jimmer Fredette crossover on Tuesday, was considered a toss-up leading up to the Warriors’ Sunday night opener against the L.A. Clippers, and eventually played. He was awful. Chris Paul is a damned good defender, but he’s not “hold Steph Curry to 4-12 shooting with five turnovers” good. No one is.

The Warriors have to sit Curry to save their season, and sitting Curry could ruin their season. Both truths seem completely obvious right now, and only the good fortune of fast healing or a true joint renaissance for David Lee and Andris Biedrins can make either wrong. If Curry limps through a few weeks of action, this ankle injury could bug him all season long. The Warriors can’t afford a sub-optimal Curry. But if Golden State lets him heal for a few weeks, they could legitimately be a half-dozen games out of a playoff spot by the time he returns. Mark Jackson and the front office have all but branded a playoff bid as an expectation for this club. Given the state of the roster — this team might have the worst bench in the NBA, even worse than the L.A. Lakers or Memphis Grizzlies — that was a longshot as soon as the goal was created. But hobble Curry, and it’s over.

Coaches don’t tend to fare well when expectations aren’t met, but Jackson put himself in a bad spot by writing a check his team probably can’t cash. The coach seems to be tight with the front office, and no one thinks Joe Lacob will give two straight coaches one-and-out tenures. (Keith Smart coached the team last season and was fired to make way for Jackson. Smart had presided over a 10-win improvement.) But this is a bad situation to start Jackson’s coaching career, and unless Curry heals quickly, the season’s on the fast track to the lottery in Oakland.

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Read More: Jason Kidd (G – DAL), Chris Bosh (F – MIA), Dirk Nowitzki (F – DAL), Shawn Marion (F – DAL), Stephen Curry (G – GSW), Dallas Mavericks, Miami Heat, Los Angeles Lakers

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