"Gilbert Arenas gave the Washington Wizards a scare about an hour before Tuesday night's game against the Miami Heat. After running through pregame warmups, the guard and team trainers informed coach Flip Saunders that the sore right calf that had kept Arenas out of Monday's practice was too tight for him to play.

Saunders, who already had four other injured players, had to come up with a new starting lineup. But 10 minutes before tipoff, Arenas changed his mind.

Not only did Arenas play - and start - he was on the court for a season-high 42 minutes and fell two assists shy of recording a triple-double. But it wasn't the type of triple-double he was looking for, nor the outcome he sought.

The Heat thumped the Wizards 90-76, and Arenas had 21 points, eight assists and a career-high 12 turnovers. And he had a late-game technical foul for arguing a call. Arenas' butter fingers proved contagious; Washington combined for 22 turnovers as a team. Miami (6-1) capitalized, scoring 27 points off the Wizards' giveaways, and the Heat got their second victory over Washington (2-6) in a seven-day span.

"It's the same thing," a frustrated Saunders said. "When things get bad, we as individuals try to do too much instead of trying to get everybody involved. Then we made some bad decisions, turned the ball over, had some charges that were called. But it wasn't for a lack of effort."

Adding injury to insult, Randy Foye left the game midway through the second quarter with a sprained right ankle and did not return.

Dwyane Wade, who scored 40 points in the first meeting (a 93-89 victory at Verizon Center on Nov. 4), had 41 points Tuesday. Caron Butler had 19 points and seven rebounds for Washington. Brendan Haywood added 13 points and 11 rebounds, while Andray Blatche added 13 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.

"That double-double, I could care less," Blatche said. "I just want to get a win, period. We're starting to dig ourselves into a hole, and we've got to get out of this [stuff] as soon as possible." "