Wade does wonders to Wolves' defense

For a superstar player, Dwyane Wade sure spends an awful lot of time face down on the floor, like a boxer trying to regain his faculties after being belted. He's fearless about driving to the basket, but there's a certain pinball-machine style to his game. Give him credit for toughness, because he earns his points.

Wade was injured when Minnesota visited Miami last month, and the Wolves got a reminder Saturday of how hollow that victory was. The Heat played like a typical second-game-in-two-nights NBA squad, seemingly easy pickings for the home team. Even Kurt Rambis called the other Heat players just "OK." All except Wade, whose game on nights like these prompts an important strategic question: Why does he ever pass? Wade, who scored 43 points Friday in the Heat's overtime win at Indiana, doggedly tried to get his teammates involved, but hitting the open man only gave those shooters a chance to clank shots.

Wade, on the other hand, could do whatever he wanted. He reminded me of Michael Jordan in the way he smoothly and deliberately, almost in slow motion sometimes, dribbled into the middle of the defense and simply rose for a hang-in-the-air short jumper. But commit to cutting off those 12-footers, and he would simply take one extra step, flash to the basket and lay the ball in. It was beautiful to watch, unless you were the Wolves.

And not much else about that game was beautiful. The third quarter was vintage Wolves basketball, with a stuck-in-neutral offense littering the gym with missed shots. But Miami wasn't much better; while the Wolves scored just 14 points, the Heat managed only 20.

How bad was the third quarter? The teams combined to go 3-for-16 at the free-throw line, including an 0-for-5 by the Heat. Udonis Haslam was 0-for-4, Minnesota's Ryan Hollins was 0-for-5, and the teams missed seven straight free throws during one stretch.

Whew. Just six more to go. A few other notables on Saturday:

-- Corey Brewer missed all nine shots he took from the floor, including four three-pointers, just two nights after scoring the Wolves final 10 points. Weird. It was the first time Brewer has failed to make a basket since Nov. 7, 2008.

-- As I wrote in the game story, Darko Milicic left the game after catching an elbow to the jaw in the second quarter and didn't play again, severely impacting the Wolves' defense. Neglected to mention that Milicic had already scored 10 points and blocked three shots. Despite having departed the arena to have his jaw checked at a hospital, Milicic was the Wolves' leading scorer until just seven minutes remained in the game.

-- I mentioned in my story that the Wolves have been whistled for few technical fouls this season, but I really thought Rambis would get one Saturday. He was on the officials pretty hard, and when referee Sean Wright explained one call to him, Rambis yelled an expletive, then four or five times yelled, "You're making stuff up! Don't make stuff up, Sean!"

-- It was cut from the story, but here's the Wolves' technical foul breakdown this year: Ryan Hollins four, Damien Wilkins two, Darko Milicic and Jonny Flynn, one apiece. Minnesota as a team has fewer technical fouls than a half-dozen players, led of course by Boston's Rasheed Wallace.