Mashburn, Heat Burn Sonics

With Alonzo Mourning sidelined, the Miami Heat turned to Jamal Mashburn.

Mashburn scored 29 points as the Heat ended a six-year drought against the Seattle SuperSonics with a 101-83 victory Thursday night.

"We were committed to going to Jamal early and getting him off to a good start," coach Pat Riley said. "Sometimes he needs to adjust when teams are double-teaming him. I don't want him to get down if he's not making shots because he is so valuable to us."

"We jumped on those guys early and made them play from behind," said Clarence Weatherspoon, who started in place of Mourning as the Heat went with a smaller lineup. "We have finally established a home-court advantage."

With Mourning out with a sore left ankle, the Heat turned to Mashburn, who was 13-of-20 from the field and added six rebounds as Miami won its 10th straight home game, third-best in franchise history.

"We knew going in that they can win without Alonzo," Seattle coach Paul Westphal said. "I hope our guys were beyond that. They just beat the Knicks the other night without him."

Tim Hardaway added 18 points and eight assists, and P.J. Brown scored 14 for Miami. Mark Strickland and Clarence Weatherspoon each scored 13 points.

Ruben Patterson scored 24 points for Seattle, Vin Baker 23 and Gary Payton 20.

The Heat jumped out to a 31-13 lead after one quarter as they made 65 percent of their shots, compared to just 22.7 percent for the Sonics.

"We got off to a great start," Riley said. "We're comfortable here, and we're shooting the ball better here at home."

Miami increased its lead to 37-17 in the early stages of the second, but Seattle cut that in half and closed to 51-41 on Patterson's 3-pointer at the halftime buzzer.

"We felt great to be down by just 10 points, as badly as we played and as great as they played," Westphal said.

"We should have attacked the rim more. When we did that, we were getting back into the game. They made us take too many perimeter shots, and that let them get into transition. We put ourselves in a hole right from the start of the game."

The Heat led by 17 points midway through the third, but the Sonics again responded, using Payton's 12 points to close to 74-66 at the end of the period.

Baker's tip-in pulled Seattle to 76-70, but the Heat answered with an 11-4 run to open an 87-74 lead with 7:02 left.

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