KEY POINTS:
Auckland Stars 94
Harbour Heat 84
The Auckland Stars might not have won too many friends off the court this week but they did the one thing that really matters - won on the court to keep their season alive.
Having come back from the dead once already this week after initially being thrown out of the competition for not paying their entry fee, the Stars needed no such resurrection to get past a Heat team who have now fallen at the first playoff hurdle two years running on their home court.
The defeat, a third this season to their crosstown rivals, will be a bitter pill for the Heat, who will feel at least partly victimised for having followed a Basketball New Zealand directive that led to their spending build-up time preparing to face Taranaki rather than Auckland in last night's match.
Quite how the ruckus over the Stars' expulsion affected the Heat is impossible to quantify but it certainly didn't do any harm to a Stars side that looked highly motivated from the outset of the game.
"It just sort of brought us together - it was us against the world," Stars forward Casey Frank said after the match. "It just seemed like nobody wanted us to play except for us. We finally got to play."
The Heat's fans needled the Aucklanders with chants of, "We don't need a lawsuit" - a reference to the threat of legal action that resulted in the Stars being reinstated for the match - but the taunt rather backfired, with the Stars racing to a 33-19 quarter-time lead.
Game announcer Andrew Dewhurst continued the ribbing by sending a collection bucket around the crowd for the allegedly hard-up visitors, but it was the Stars who had the last laugh, booking a sudden-death semifinal date with Waikato in Te Awamutu tomorrow.
With Adrian Majstrovich and George Baker in hot shooting form, the Stars' lead grew to 17 before the Heat stemmed the tide with an 11-2 run late in the half to head to the break trailing 34-45.
American point guard Baker's three-point shooting exploits had been minimal since he nailed six of seven against the Heat in the corresponding fixture six weeks ago. But he rediscovered his touch at the crucial time, nailing three bombs in the first half as the Stars shot seven of 14 from beyond the arc.
Having shot just 30 per cent from the field in the first half, the Heat were fortunate to be trailing by just 11.
They rallied briefly in the third quarter to cut the deficit to seven but the Stars' late flurry saw them take a handy 14-point buffer in the final quarter.
Back-to-back threes from Hayden Allen and Oscar Foreman briefly raised hopes of a Heat comeback but the Stars were never seriously threatened despite Frank and Dillon Boucher fouling out early.
Majstrovich underlined his value with a 24-point and 11-rebound double-double.
Foreman had a game-high 26 points for the defeated Harbour Heat.
