Goran Dragic of the Phoenix Suns lays up a shot past Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant of the Oklahoma City Thunder during the second half of the NBA game at US Airways Center on Sunday in Phoenix, Arizona.


Agencies/Los Angeles


J.R. Smith was deadly from downtown Sunday but the New York Knicks playoff hopes are quickly dying. LeBron James dropped in 38 points and the Miami Heat withstood Smith’s record-setting 3-point barrage to beat the visiting Knicks, 102-91
“It’s a make or miss league,” James said. “You do your job and you live with the results of J.R. making some of those bombs.”
The streaky Smith finished with a season-high-tying 32 points, including a franchise-mark 10 3-pointers on 22 attempts, breaking the league-record for tries set by Portland’s Damon Stoudamire on April 15, 2005.
“It’s not really been a goal of mine,” Smith offered. “I saw the open 3 and tried to take them. I had to take advantage.”
Mario Chalmers scored 15 points while Chris Bosh added 14 as two- time defending champ Miami (53-23) moved a game ahead of Indiana for the East top playoff seed after the Pacers were pounded by the visiting Atlanta Hawks 107-88.
Ray Felton netted 14 points for New York but Carmelo Anthony, hampered by a right shoulder strain, finished with just 13 on 4-of-17 shooting.
“It felt like a dead arm at times,” said Anthony, the league’s No. 2 scorer at 27.7 points per game. “It’s not pain, it’s just uncomfortable.
“Right now, it’s bad timing because of our situation. I can’t be myself at the moment, that’s the frustrating part.”
With Anthony’s dead arm, the Knicks’ (33-45) playoff hopes are quickly dying, after falling two games behind the Hawks for the East eighth and final spot with a handful remaining.
“Our fate is almost now in Atlanta’s hands,” Anthony explained. “It’s tough ... My fate is in somebody else’s hands.”
The Heat shrugged off an early 13-point deficit and built an 85-70 cushion with 8 minutes 51 seconds left.
Smith kept firing, though. He nailed five triples in the final frame, including two around one by Chalmers at the other end, to bring the Knicks within 97-91 with 1 minute 51 seconds remaining.
But Bosh got into the long ball act, burying his 3-point dagger to seal the outcome.
“You have to get to the point where it is not deflating,” Bosh said of Smith’s shooting. “We’re going to get into situations like that in the playoffs pretty soon. The trick is to stay confident.”

Durant scores 38 to pass Jordan


Kevin Durant scored 38 points to pass Michael Jordan with his 41st straight game of 25-plus, but it wasn’t enough to help Oklahoma City beat Phoenix on Sunday.
Goran Dragic led a half dozen Suns players in double figures with 26 points as the Phoenix rallied past the Thunder 122-115 to move into sole possession of eighth place in the Western Conference standings.
Durant now has at least 25 points in 41 consecutive games to surpass the legendary Jordan, who had 40 back in the 1986-87 season. Durant’s streak is now the third longest in NBA history.
“I don’t really care about it,” Durant told The Oklahoman newspaper. “I wish it was over.”
Durant last failed to score 25 or more points on January 5 against Boston. Durant also had 11 rebounds.
Heading into Sunday’s contest the league’s leading scorer was averaging 32.1 points a game. Durant has won the scoring title in four of the last five seasons.
Oscar Robertson had a 46-game run of 25-plus back in 1963-64 and Wilt Chamberlain did it in all 80 regular-season games of the 1961-62 season while playing for the Philadelphia Warriors.
Those two streaks happened before the league’s three-point era came into being, making Durant’s the longest of the so called, modern era.
Phoenix led by three points late in the fourth quarter when they turned it up a notch to record the victory in front of a crowd of 18,422 at the US Airways Center arena.
Eric Bledsoe stripped Durant and took it the full length of the court before getting blocked at the rim by Russell Westbrook.
Derek Fisher came up with the loose ball for the Thunder, but P.J. Tucker ripped it from him, drawing a foul on the veteran and making two crucial foul shots with 43 second left to make it 117-112.
Bledsoe finished with 18 points.
Tucker scored a career-high 22 points and Gerald Green came off the bench to tally 24 as the Suns won for the eighth time in their last 10 games.
“We had guys make plays tonight. It is as simple as that,” Suns head coach Jeff Hornacek said.