Chris Bosh tightens up (Getty Images)

Miami’s collective backs aren’t against the wall. The team isn’t a loss away from elimination as it enters Thursday’s Game 4, it’s just in a bit of trouble. If the Heat do better to nail their open perimeter looks, while clamping down on a Spurs team that is bound to regress to the mean on their own three-point attempts, Miami could walk out of San Antonio’s AT&T Center on Thursday with the home-court advantage back in its grasp, and three games to earn two wins and back to back NBA titles.

As a result, the Heat don’t have to play a desperate brand of ball in Game 4, but it also has to be mindful of the fact that this is the team’s 102nd game of the season, and that the teachable moments are done with. The Heat have to run with the horses they’ve got, and with Dwyane Wade dragging a leg, fellow All-Star Chris Bosh can’t continue to blow chance after chance on connecting on good looks from the field.

[Related: Spurs' Tony Parker 'ready to go' for Game 4]

This is why the Miami Heat have to stop giving Chris Bosh chance after chance.

Patrick Ewing and John Starks take in a playoff game as half of Louis CK looks on (Getty Images)

Basketball Hall of Famer and longtime Wizards, Magic and Rockets assistant coach Patrick Ewing is back in the NBA, working as the newly-minted associate head coach of the Charlotte Bobcats. Ewing will run the team alongside head coach Steve Clifford as team owner Michael Jordan continues a long and frustrating rebuilding project with the long-suffering squad. The former Knick center, who was out of the NBA last season, has for just as long coveted a head coaching gig at this level, but he seems to have overcome his particular low point in this realm from last summer, when he turned down a job with the D-League’s Erie BayHawks last season so as not to slum as a minor league coach.

All seemed to be going fine for Patrick, until news hit about Jason Kidd’s surprising candidacy and then hiring as Brooklyn Nets head coach. Kidd, who had retired from the game just days before moving up the Nets’ list, has absolutely no coaching experience, and now he’ll be running a team that plays in the city that Ewing once routinely drove into the playoffs. Ewing, and son Patrick Ewing Jr. (a former New Orleans Pelican and NBA hopeful), were more than a little taken aback.

[Related: Jason Kidd was the best choice for Nets]

Here’s what the younger Ewing wrote on Twitter on Wednesday and Thursday:

Jason Kidd, during a frustrating final playoff run in May (Getty Images)

Jason Kidd, with that marvelous basketball IQ of his, may one day turn out to be the greatest head coach in NBA history. This isn’t the reason, though, that he’s the absolute best choice for the Brooklyn Nets.

Kidd, who was hired on Wednesday just days after ending his playing career, is the perfect hire for the Nets because he’s the most Brooklyn Nets-y hire the Brooklyn Nets could possibly hope to hire. Outside of signing on Magic Johnson or Justin Bieber’s giant hat to lead the team, Kidd was the biggest name the Nets could go for. And in a remarkable 11-month stint since finishing up the team’s final season in New Jersey, Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov and general manager Billy King have put together a lineup full of massive contracts featuring the biggest names that were available at their particular times.

Of course, they’ll go nowhere, but that isn’t the point. The point is the press conference on Thursday, or the flashing bulbs that will await Kidd’s first home game on basic cable TV next fall. Even if Kidd turns out to be the second coming of Red Auerbach – who ran a 143-82 record coaching with two teams before taking over the Boston Celtics – the focus right now is hiring a big name that can please Mssrs. Prokhorov and King, two basketball minds that have proven to have the patience of a Le Sueur pea over their respective NBA careers.

Good morning. Here is beastly Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond rising and hammering a slam dunk on the head, body and soul of popular musician Chris Brown during what appears to be a Wednesday night run at a Los Angeles gym:

Feels like it's going to be a good day, huh?

Miami Heat fans have a pretty poor reputation among NBA observers and partisans. In the eyes of many, they show up late for important games, approach the game itself with cursory interest, and generally just don't know very much about basketball. As with any stereotype, it's easy to question the validity of those statements, but there's no question that it's the perception. Maybe it's just an uncomfortable byproduct of living in a city where the weather is often amazing.

The creative minds at "Jimmy Kimmel Live" decided the popular image of Miami Heat fans was ripe for exploitation. So as part of their post-game show after Tuesday night's Game 3, they decided to ask various Heat fans about some of the key strategic battles and important players of the series. Except, because it was part of their "Lie Witness News" series, all those issues and figures were fake. Watch the video above, and try to come up with your own thoughts on the intricacies of the rhombus offense and the coaching acumen of Erik Estrada.

San Antonio fans enjoy ripping off Queen lyrics (Getty Images)

For a blowout win that was over by the fourth quarter, this sure is one compelling video. NBA entertainment knows what it’s doing. As does San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who delivered the best in-huddle lines of the evening, as is usually the case. Give it a watch:

This sort of winds down our Game 3 coverage, so for those of you that missed out in a wave of linkdom and potential G3 fatigue earlier on Wednesday, here’s a roundup of Yahoo! Sports’ reaction to San Antonio’s significant win:

LeBron James saw a lot of long, active Spurs arms in Game 3. (Derick E. Hingle-USA TODAY Sports)

A look around the league and the Web that covers it. It's also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren't always listed in order of importance. That's for you, dear reader, to figure out.

C: SB Nation and Hang Time. Mike Prada and John Schuhmann do dynamite jobs of breaking down LeBron James' evident, persistent struggles in the Miami Heat's huge Game 3 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, owing in part to San Antonio's deep-sagging, paint-packing team defense and James' curious inability to hit jumpers in the Finals after sharpening his stroke this season.

PF: Grantland. Zach Lowe's Game 3 recap focuses on the surprisingly porous and uncommunicative Heat defense that enabled San Antonio's full-scale long-range onslaught: "[...] the Heat will lose just like this if they continue to make very basic NBA mistakes."

SF: Waiting for Next Year. A good read from Scott Sargent on how being jettisoned by the Cleveland Cavaliers in favor of the likes of Manny Harris was the best thing that could ever have happened to NBA Finals-leading scorer Danny Green.

You know how the Miami Heat (like many sports teams before them) have been using the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army" as their player introduction music, and how Heat backers at the AmericanAirlines Arena have fallen in love with “OOOOH OH OH OH OH OHHHH OHHHHHHH” chants when things are going pretty well for Erik Spoelstra's squadron? Yeah, San Antonio Spurs fans know, too.

And apparently, like the dude Eddie Maisonet, the AT&T Center faithful aren't such big fans of the practice — so with the clock winding down on San Antonio's long-range-bombing 36-point beatdown, Spurs fans decided to twist the knife just a little bit by letting loose some big-time bellows:

Top-drawer trolling, Spurs fans. You really had yourselves a glorious evening, didn't you?