NBA Preseason Live Roundup: Heat Pull Away From Nets, Celtics Hold Off Hornets, Bulls Rout Bucks Early

THE WIRE

Wednesday night brought a full NBA preseason board, and by early evening on the West Coast every game in progress had a shape. This roundup is a live snapshot, checked against the ESPN scoreboard at 6:33 PM PT — all four games below were still in progress, all four are exhibitions, and every score will keep moving. The Previously live scores page carries each finish, and our Target Center report covers the fifth game of the night, Detroit at Minnesota, in full.

HEAT 112, NETS 103 — END OF 3RD: The highest-scoring game of the night is in Miami, where the Heat rode a 43-point third quarter to a nine-point lead over Brooklyn at Kaseya Center. Miami’s quarter-by-quarter line tells the story of a game that tightened before it broke open: 35, 34 and then 43, against Brooklyn’s 29, 37 and 37. The Nets actually won the second quarter and trailed by only three at halftime, 69-66, before the Heat’s third-quarter surge built the cushion. Brooklyn arrived as one of the preseason’s early stories at 3-0, while Miami entered at 2-1 — which makes the fourth quarter a genuine test of the Nets’ unbeaten exhibition run rather than a formality. If Brooklyn’s bench can erase nine points in 12 minutes on the road, the Nets will carry real momentum into the final days before the October 20 opener; if Miami closes it out, the Heat will have handed a previously perfect preseason team its first loss with exactly the kind of third-quarter burst coaches spend all of October trying to bottle.

CELTICS 92, HORNETS 84 — 8:28, 4TH: At TD Garden, Boston is protecting an eight-point lead in the fourth quarter against a Charlotte team that refused to go away. The Celtics built their advantage early — 28-20 in the first quarter and 26-24 in the second for a 54-44 halftime lead — then watched the Hornets win the third quarter 33-31 behind a push that cut the margin to 85-77 entering the fourth. Both teams had scored seven points in the early fourth-quarter minutes at the snapshot. Boston entered the night unbeaten in the preseason at 2-0, and its October form has been emphatic: the Celtics beat Cleveland 124-113 on October 8 and routed Philadelphia 144-106 on October 11, per the team’s schedule listing carried by Sports Illustrated. Charlotte, 1-1 entering Wednesday, has treated this trip as a measuring stick, and a competitive fourth quarter in Boston — win or lose — tells its young core plenty. For the Celtics, the closing minutes are about the reserves holding a lead their starters built, the single most common preseason exam in the league this week.

BULLS 62, BUCKS 39 — HALFTIME: The night’s most lopsided half unfolded at Fiserv Forum, where Chicago outscored Milwaukee 24-15 in the first quarter and then detonated for a 38-24 second quarter to lead by 23 at the break. Both teams entered at 1-2 in the preseason, a detail that makes the margin more surprising, not less: this was not a contender tuning up against a rebuilding side, but two teams with identical exhibition records, one of which simply owned the first 24 minutes. Milwaukee’s 39 points across two quarters is the kind of offensive stall preseason coaches circle in red — shots will come and go in October, but a half that quiet at home usually means the second unit never found a rhythm at all. Chicago’s staff, meanwhile, gets the pleasant problem of the evening: protecting a 23-point cushion with lineups built for evaluation rather than preservation, and deciding how much of the second half belongs to the players who built the lead.

PELICANS 62, MAVERICKS 49 — 9:02, 3RD: In Dallas, New Orleans carried its first-half control into the third quarter at American Airlines Center. The Pelicans won the first quarter 24-18 and the second 32-27 to lead 56-45 at halftime, then edged the opening minutes of the third 6-4 to stretch the margin to 13 at the snapshot. Both teams came in at 1-1 in the preseason, and the game has played to that even billing in everything except the scoreboard: Dallas has had its runs, but New Orleans has answered each one, which is precisely the habit a team tries to build in the final week before the regular season. The Mavericks’ path back runs through their reserves — with most of the second half still to play and starters’ minutes shrinking across the league this week, this is the stretch where Dallas’s bench either makes it a game or makes it a film session.

Still to Come Tonight

One game had not tipped at the snapshot: the Denver Nuggets visit the LA Clippers at Intuit Dome at 7:30 PM PT, the late window that closes the league’s Wednesday board. Denver brings a 2-1 preseason record into Inglewood; the Clippers are 1-1. Our full preview of Nuggets-Clippers breaks down what to watch when that one gets underway.

Across all five arenas, the theme of the night is the same one running through the entire league this week: the top of every rotation looks close to ready, and the bottom of every rotation is still an open competition. The regular season opens on Tuesday, October 20, and the players deciding these fourth quarters and second halves are, in many cases, deciding their own places in it. Keep the full board in view on the live scores page, browse team and league coverage on the NBA hub, and find everything else from a busy night in sports on the Previously sports hub.