MOVING ON: Despite nursing a knee injury, Dwyane Wade scored 18 points in the Heat’s 94-91 Game 5 series-clinching win over the Bulls last night. (NBAE/Getty Images)
MIAMI — For two days, Dwyane Wade heard the critics in the wake of his six-point showing in Game 4 Monday night.
In the final eight minutes in Game 5 last night, Wade showed he still has some gas left in his tank.
After checking in with 8:27 to go — and after a lengthy stay in the locker room — Wade hit all three of his shots in the fourth to help lead the Heat to a 94-91 come-from-behind victory over the Bulls to clinch the Eastern Conference semifinal in front of a sellout crowd of 20,025 inside AmericanAirlines Arena.
“Out of all of the games in the playoffs, this is the best I’ve felt,” Wade said, who finished with 18 points, five rebounds and six assists, adding that he went back into the locker room to get his ailing knee re-taped before coming back in the game in the fourth. “So hopefully I’m headed in the right direction.”
The Heat await the winner of Knicks-Pacers in the Eastern Conference Finals, which will begin here next week.
“It’s a Catch-22,” said LeBron James, who finished with 23 points, seven rebounds and eight assists, while sitting next to Wade on the podium afterwards. “If he doesn’t play, you guys are like, ‘Why are you not in uniform? It’s a playoff game.’ When he does play and he’s not scoring 20 points, it’s ‘D-Wade shouldn’t be out there. He should rest.’
“I really don’t care for it too much. … He is a Hall of Famer. He has two rings. He doesn’t have to prove himself to no one.”
After Chicago took its biggest lead of the game on a pair of free throws by Richard Hamilton with 1:50 remaining in the third quarter to take a 75-64 lead, the Heat finally responded with an 18-6 run to take the lead for the first time in the second half when Norris Cole hit a jumper with 6:59 remaining.
Then, after a Cole dunk on the next possession put Miami ahead for good, Wade scored six of the next eight points for the Heat, including an emphatic tip-back slam dunk to give the Heat a 93-86 lead with 3:02 remaining.
“I know a lot of people were giving him that question mark,” said Chris Bosh, who had 12 points and seven rebounds. “Even if he was going to play, they weren’t really sure what he’d bring. We always know what he’s capable of. He was really able to put his imprint on the game late.
“Without that spurt, we probably don’t win.”
Chicago had one last chance to tie the game when it had the ball down three with 26.9 seconds left, but missed two clean looks from behind the arc to tie the game — one from Nate Robinson with 15.9 seconds left, and another from Jimmy Butler with 1.8 seconds left — and the Bulls were sent home.
“You live with it,” Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau said of the final possession.
“I knew that we would fight back. I knew we wouldn’t go away.”
Things never should’ve gotten that close for the Heat after they leapt out to an 18-2 lead in the first five minutes of the game. But, like they have throughout these playoffs, the Bulls just kept on coming.
Despite once again being without Derrick Rose, Kirk Hinrich and Luol Deng, the Bulls — who already fought their way past the Nets and took Game 1 of this series from the Heat despite being undermanned — somehow clawed their way back into the game, going on a 34-14 run to take the lead late in the second quarter on a Jimmy Butler 3-pointer, a lead they would hold all the way into the fourth, giving the Heat all they could handle before finally going home for the summer.
“I need at least 24 hours off after going against those guys,” James said with a smile afterward. “They’re very tough, mentally and physically.”