Detroit Pistons at Miami Heat

Heat start 2nd half on 21-0 run, top Pistons 108-74

It didn't stay that way for long.

And thanks to a 21-0 run to open the second half, the Miami Heat now have a tiny bit of breathing room in the Eastern Conference playoff race. The biggest Heat run of the season led to the biggest Heat win of the season, a 108-74 romp past the Detroit Pistons on Wednesday night.

"Just a professional win by us tonight," Heat guard Dwyane Wade said. "We played against a team that wasn't making shots early, and we continued to keep going at them and continued to keep applying pressure."

Justise Winslow scored 16 points for Miami, which had seven players in double figures. Dion Waiters scored 14, Josh Richardson and Hassan Whiteside each had 13 and Wade finished with 11 for Miami.

"Our starting lineup has had some good starts and some play that's been trending in the right direction," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "But that was as inspiring as they've been."

Blake Griffin scored 13 points for Detroit, which got 11 from Wayne Ellington. Detroit missed its first 11 shots of the third quarter, eight of them from 3-point range.

"It's about our mental fortitude and coming out and having a better mindset at the beginning of games, myself included," Griffin said. "I'm not excluding myself from that at all. If we have any fight about us at all we'll come out and rectify that."

Miami (32-35) is still No. 8 in the East, now two games ahead of No. 9 Orlando and two games back of No. 7 Detroit.

It wasn't Drummond's night.

"For two games in a row now, we didn't come out in playoff mode," Pistons coach Dwane Casey said. "There's nothing schematically. There's nothing X-and-O wise. It's our approach. We have to understand at this time of year ... the only thing you can do is scrap and play hard."

TIP-INS

Pistons: Detroit hadn't lost a quarter by 25 points since Oct. 30, 2010. ... Drummond was looking to join Kevin Love (53), Dwight Howard (separate streaks of 33 and 20), Griffin (27) and Russell Westbrook (23, earlier this season) as players in the last decade with 20 straight double-doubles.

EIGHT IS ENOUGH

WADE BLOCKS

Wade had a first-quarter blocked shot against Detroit's 7-foot-1 Thon Maker. It was the 879th block of Wade's career, leaving him 14 shy of Michael Jordan's all-time regular-season record for guards. When adding playoff games, Wade already has more blocks than any guard in history.

SLOW START

UP NEXT

Pistons: Host the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday.

Heat: Host Milwaukee on Friday.

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Regular Season Series

Series tied 2-2