sport

“We’ve just got to play basketball,” said Stephenson, who hours later went on to yap at Wade and the referees, poke his head into multiple Heat huddles and blow air into James’s ear during a stoppage of play.

James shrugged at the shenanigans.

“Lance is Lance,” said James, who added that the only person whose ear he might have ever blown into was his wife.

The game opened with a bit of flash as Mario Chalmers floated a ball in the direction of James, who soared up along to the baseline to catch and dunk it in a fluid motion for the game’s opening points.

But thing got considerably untidier from there, particularly for James, who picked up his third foul halfway through the second quarter. It was just the second time this entire season that he had three fouls before halftime. He picked up his fourth one 22 seconds into the third quarter. Three minutes later, he had his fifth.

“Regardless of what happens, we still had enough opportunities to come away with a win,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said of James’s foul trouble.