Final 4½: Wade takes over while Carter fades

AST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Pretend you get to pick one of two players:

Player A is a guy who scored 43 points and knocked the opposing superstar out with an elbow to the mouth.

Player B is a guy who scored 30 points and was taken to the locker room with a mouth full of blood.

Pretty easy choice, eh? It's got to be A. Right?

Wrong.

What we neglected to tell you was that Player B would go to the foul line 11 times in the final 4½ minutes of the fourth quarter and knock down all 11. He'd also have the ball in his hands at the start of each and every critical possession down the stretch, and he'd make the right thing happen almost every single time.

Player A, meanwhile, has a bit of a ballhandling deficiency. And when his opponents came at him with an aggressive double-team near midcourt when the game was about to turn, he coughed it up both times.

Yes, the player you'd pick, at least on Friday night, is Dwyane Wade. You'd pass on Vince Carter.

Game 3 of the Nets-Heat series wasn't decided until the final five minutes, but when it came time for someone to take over, that someone was Wade, who scored 15 of his points in the final stanza to lead Miami past New Jersey 103-92 Friday night for a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series. Game 4 is Sunday night.

"Both guys are great one-on-one players, but you saw how Dwyane Wade finished the game with the ball in his hands. The team was up and we needed to come down and make plays, and he made plays," teammate Shandon Anderson said.

Things were going fairly well for the Nets by the midpoint of the fourth quarter, a drive by Carter through four defenders having given them an 81-80 lead with 4:34 left.

On Miami's next possession, Wade scooted around Jason Kidd on the perimeter and got inside for a three-point play (Carter fouled him) that put Miami ahead for good.

On New Jersey's next possession, the Heat quickly trapped Carter after he crossed midcourt, and Gary Payton came up with a steal that led to a breakaway bucket.

Next play, same thing, except this time it was Shaquille O'Neal stripping Carter and tying him up for a jump ball. Shaq won the tip, leading to another drive by Wade around Kidd that led to two foul shots and an 87-81 lead.

"At times, people don't show hard on him like that, and he can be real casual with the ball," Payton said of Carter. "And I don't think he was expecting a hard trap like Shaq did, and it just happened. We put our hands on the ball, and most of the time we grab him. But this time we were hitting at the ball, and when he lost it, we got it."

After Carter answered with a difficult fadeaway, James Posey stole the ball from Kidd in the low post, and O'Neal converted an alley-oop dunk off a pass from Wade. Another jumper by Carter was followed by a perfectly threaded pass by Wade to the cutting Udonis Haslem, who was fouled and made both shots.

Wade knocked down a pair from the line to make it 97-89 with 52.8 seconds left, and Carter bricked a pair from the line just seven-tenths of a second later.

The game was all but over, and the grimace Carter wore after those two misses was even grumpier than the look Wade sported a quarter earlier after Carter's elbow caught him in the mouth.

In the end, it was Carter and the Nets who were bloodied -- and it was Wade who exited the building looking like the most valuable superstar in this series.