ATLANTA — OK, no one needed this. We all knew the Heat was a young team entering its first playoff atmosphere. We knew there would be mistakes, problems, bad moments. We knew they often might look like a young team looking young.

But no one expected a night such as Sunday's 90-64 loss. No one considered a Nestea plunge into embarrassment.

No one predicted a team so lost that Game 1 moved to junk time before half. Or a team so disjointed Udonis Haslem went into a rage at a timeout, throwing towels, yelling at teammates. Or a night so awful it brought the season's lowest point total on its biggest night.

You want the soundtrack to Sunday? In the third quarter, Dwyane Wade went up for what would have been a fast-break dunk, but he had the ball knocked out of his hand out of bounds ... and the crowd laughed. In unison. Like a sit-com audience.

No one needed Wade to become a prop in this comedy act. But that's what can happen when you have one capable player, just one, as the Heat did this game. Everyone knew Wade being Wade was the Heat's best chance to advance this series.

But is he its only chance?

One-on-five isn't much of a way to win, even if that one is Wade.

"A lot of our defense was focusing on Dwyane, keeping a body in front of him, making him take jump shots," Atlanta guard Joe Johnson said.

Every time Wade got the ball, Atlanta put him in a smother sandwich. His Heat teammates, meanwhile, just stood and watched as if surprised. How could that be? Hasn't that been the working plan against the Heat since Day One?

Yet Wade had no help to the point he took nine first-quarter shots (making five). The rest of the team combined for just 3 of 10. And soon the rout was on.

"There's an element of unknown with this group," Spoelstra had said a couple of hours earlier, citing its youth.

Here was the unknown Sunday: Is that all Jermaine O'Neal (five points, two rebounds) is? Will Daequan Cook (0 for 5) ever regain the form that won the All-Star weekend's 3-point shooting?

This night made everyone look worse than they are, and that included Michael Beasley. Listen. I'm as big a fan of his as anybody. But when Wade and others say he needs to grow up before this team can, Sunday provided a picture.

In pre-game warmups before the season's biggest game, everyone on the Heat worked on game-situation shots. Not Beasley. He stood in the corner and lofted circus shots that nearly scraped the ceiling before falling toward the basket. One after another. One side, then the other.

Finally, a couple teammates said something to him and he went back to shooting game shots. Then the game started and Beasley was as lost as everyone else on the Heat.

He's the one guy with an offensive force to match Atlanta's size and strength on the front line. Yet he scored 10 points on 5-of-15 shooting in more than 32 minutes.

The good news: He was the only other Heat player besides Wade to hit double figures.

Optimists will say the Heat fell down to Dallas 2-0 and doom was forecast. But that was a different team on a different run. This night looked more like the last time the Heat was in the playoffs, against Chicago, when it was rushed into the offseason.

That team was too old and bad.

This one looks too young and awkward.

"We focused on (Wade) and we did a good job on him," Atlanta coach Mike Woodson said.

Four visiting teams won the first game of their series this opening weekend of the NBA playoffs. The Heat didn't come close. It isn't this bad. It can't be. But it has until Wednesday to come up with a better way of showing so.