The Boston Celtics were able to call on the work of two returning starters to help them counter a virtuoso display by Dwyane Wade to beat the Miami Heat 112-106 in overtime on Wednesday night. Point guard Rajon Rondo scored six of his team-high 25 points in the extra session after he made the shot that forced overtime on his first game since last Saturday. Wade had a season-high 44 points and appeared to have given his team the win after a dramatic steal and dunk put the Heat ahead 101-99 with 0.6 seconds remaining, but Rondo answered by catching and scoring on an inbound alley-oop at the buzzer.
"It really gets no tougher than this one," Wade said. "What a great win for us," the Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. "We found a way. A lot of guys did a lot of little things for us." Ray Allen added 22 points and Paul Pierce tallied 17 in his return from knee surgery, having missed five games, while Rondo had not played since last Saturday due to a hamstring strain. "The sum of our parts is what makes us great," Allen said.
"When somebody goes down, somebody else has to step up and other guys have and will in the future. Anytime you lose a guy, you miss them and feel the weight of it." The Los Angeles Clippers beat city rivals the Lakers for the first time in 10 meetings. Baron Davis had 25 points and 10 assists for the Clippers, who won 102-91. "I think that our best is yet to come," he said. "We need to take a victory like this and build on it."
"They played better than we did. We weren't able to keep them out of transition," said Kobe Bryant, who scoreds 33 points for the Lakers. "We lost because of our transition defence. We just gave up way too many easy points." * With agencies
