Heat slay giant anew

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Jimmy Butler scored a season high 33 points as the Miami Heat beat the National Basketball Association (NBA)-leading Utah Jazz, 124-116, to extend their winning streak to five games.

Butler also added 10 rebounds and eight assists to lead giant-killers Miami, who have toppled the NBA’s two most recent champions in the past week — the Toronto Raptors and the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers.

“I don’t want to say that we’re good yet,” Butler said.

“We’ve got so much more that we can be better at. Myself, anybody, I don’t want us to get complacent and think that we’re cool.”

Goran Dragic scored 26 points, center Bam Adebayo had 19 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists in the win.

“We just tried to take away their easy shots,” Dragic said.
“And we did.”
Donovan Mitchell shot 11-of-26 from the field and finished with 30 points for the Jazz, who dropped to 26-7 overall but still have the best record in the NBA.

The Jazz also got 17 points from Bojan Bogdanovic as well as 15 points and 12 rebounds from Rudy Gobert.

They missed their last seven shots and were three-for-16 from the floor in the final eight minutes.

“We just made a lot of mistakes, had too many breakdowns on both ends,” Jazz coach Quin Snyder said.

Utah beat Miami, 112-94, in Utah earlier this month in the only previous meeting between the teams this season.