Miami Heat: LeBron James and Dwyane Wade to Miss Hawks Game with Injuries

The Miami Heat will have to settle for the big one as two of their best players take a night off against the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday night. 

Brian Windhorst of ESPN tweets both Dwyane Wade and LeBron James will be sidelined with injuries in the TNT televised game.

The Heat will have to continue their hot start without their two leaders in what will be a very tough game against the 4-2 Hawks.

The Heat stomped on the Pacers without Wade on Wednesday night, but James poured in 33 points in that affair. A bulk of the points will now have to come from the accomplished Chris Bosh and the rest of the lesser ballyhooed Heat players.

The biggest item of note is that the Heat already lost to the Hawks earlier this week in a 100-92 contest in Miami. That was with a less-than-perfect Wade and healthy James.

Now the Heat have to contend without both of the stars. We are about to see how deep this contender runs. It may be time to worry as the Heat have shown little confidence in running this team without James or Wade. 

As The Sun-Sentinel reports, Wade was hurt in Charlotte but played in the next three games before sitting out Wednesday night against the visiting Indiana Pacers. 

For James, the report issues, "twisted his left ankle while passing to teammate Udonis Haslem for a fastbreak layup during the third quarter of Wednesday's victory over the Pacers, continuing on for seven more minutes."

It's clear that head coach Erik Spoelstra wants to get the most minutes he can out of his two stars. Now the question has to be has he milked it too much?

The answer may lie in some of the immediate returns we see in tonight's game against the Atlanta Hawks. 

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