Wade, Heat even series with Hawks

Maybe they should have let the bird fly free a little longer at the start.

Anything the Hawks could have done to stall Dwyane Wade’s take off Wednesday night might have helped.

Wade, the Miami Heat’s superstar guard, powered his team to a 108-93 win in Game 2 before a sellout crowd of 19,146 at Philips Arena, evening this first-round playoff series at 1-1.

The Heat left town with home-court advantage and the knowledge that the next two contests, Games 3 (Saturday) and Game 4 (Monday), will be played on their turf.

“We’re in a dogfight now,” Hawks forward Marvin Williams said. “We didn’t take care of our business.”

The Hawks rallied from an 18-point deficit to get to within five points twice in the final five minutes but could get no closer with the Heat making shots from all over the floor, and especially from long range.

Wade’s 29-footer off the glass for a 101-91 lead with 2:37 to play was the final deep ball dagger the Heat needed to take care of the Hawks, who didn’t help their own cause with a miserable effort from the free-throw line.

The Hawks shot 12 more free throws than the Hawks but missed 11 (19-for-30), negating any potential advantage there while also revisiting a free-throw-line bugaboo that has plagued them all season.

That fire and intensity that led the Hawks to a 26-point win in Game 1 never resurfaced Wednesday night.

“We didn’t star the game with a sense of urgency like we did in the first game,” Hawks forward Josh Smith said. “We also didn’t play together. You put those two negatives together, and that’s what causes us to lose. If you look back in the past, whenever we play selfish on the offensive end, things don’t get working on the defensive end.”

It might not have mattered with Wade and the Heat shooting the cover off the ball from deep, 15-for-26 (.577) for the game, and the Hawks unable to get any defensive stops or match the Heat from distance, the made just six of their 20 3-point attempts.

The NBA’s scoring champion this season, Wade led the Heat with 33 points on 11-for-20 shooting, including a 6-for-10 effort from beyond the 3-point line.

The Hawks’ mascot Spirit, a hawk from Zoo Atlanta, got loose in the arena at the start of the game and his journeys through the stands eventually led to a stop in play midway through the first quarter to allow his handler to retrieve him. Even that couldn’t slow Wade.

He never saw a double team from the Hawks, making his night much easier than the one he had in Game 1. But he was far from the one-man show he was in Game 1, when only one other Heat player scored in double digits.

Reigning NBA 3-point champion Daequan Cook lit the Hawks up for 20 points off the bench, including a 6-for-9 showing from beyond the 3-point line. Jermaine O’Neal worked the Hawks inside for 19 points and four blocks while Michael Beasley added 12 off the bench and Udonis Haslem 10 on 5-for-8 shooting.

“You’ve got to give them credit,” Williams said. “The made it a point come out and make shots in this game, and between Cook and Dwyane Wade, they didn’t really miss from beyond the arc. They played well, man.”

And the Hawks played awful basketball for much of the night. They had six players in double-figures for the second consecutive game, led by Mike Bibby’s 18 points on 6-for-12 shooting and Smith’s 17 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and two blocks.

Hawks captain and All-Star Joe Johnson struggled mightily. Plagued by foul trouble early, he made five of his 13 shots and finished with four turnovers and without a single assist.

“It’s starts with me,” Johnson said. “I definitely have to pick my play up. But I just thought we came out too complacent. We were nothing like the first game. We won that first game and felt like we won the series already. We didn’t have that fire in our belly. And they jumped on us, and we never recovered.”