MILWAUKEE -- The Heat probably wouldn’t mind avoiding the Bucks in the first round of the playoffs.

With first place in the Eastern Conference up for grabs on Wednesday, the Heat dropped to 0-2 against Milwaukee this season with a 105-97 loss at Bradley Center. Amazingly, nearly 10 percent of the Bucks’ victories have come against the Heat’s dream team.

The Bucks won despite 40 points from LeBron James, who said, with a straight face, that Milwaukee was simply too much to handle in second half.

“You always give credit where credit is due,” James said. “We held it as much as possible, but the roof caved in when they started making the three-pointers in the fourth quarter.”

There is little doubt that the Heat’s worst two performances this season have come against Bucks (10-11). Do the Bucks match up well against the Heat? That’s a laughable suggestion. Juwan Howard blamed divine intervention for the Heat’s latest collapse to the Andrew Bogut-less team.

“I think Juwan said it best after the game,” Shane Battier said. “He said you have to honor the basketball gods.

“There are basketball gods that watch over this game, and if you disrespect them by playing bad basketball, by not moving the ball, by playing with a lack of force and speed, they end up punishing you at the end of the day. And that’s what happened.”

In other words, the Heat played like garbage.

For example, Bucks reserve Erson Ilyasova had seven offensive rebounds. As a team, the Heat only had eight.

“They beat us on our home court, so a lack of intensity was no excuse for them,” Chris Bosh said.

But something about Milwaukee just sucks the life out of the Heat. Clearly, the Bucks’ plan was to lull the Heat to sleep. Miami led 40-23 entering the second quarter with 24 points coming from James alone.

The Heat led by as many as 18 points in the second quarter but was outscored 58-37 during the final two periods. The Heat shot 34.2 percent from the field in the second half.

“I think what the second half showed is we still have a long way to go as a ball club in terms of playing consistently,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.

The Heat has lost four of its past five games on the road and seven of its next nine games are away from AmericanAirlines Arena.

Since Jan. 17, Milwaukee is the only team with a victory against the Heat. And it has two. The Heat was poised to move past the Bulls into first place in the conference with a victory but couldn’t match the Bucks’ energy in the second half.

The Bucks defeated the Heat 91-82 on Jan.22. Wednesday’s game wasn’t much different. It couldn’t score in the second half. Bucks coach Scott Skiles predicated during his pregame news conference that his team was going to have a hard time holding the Heat in the ‘80s. He was right, but the Bucks still won.

Brandon Jennings led the comeback. He finished with 31 points on 9-of-25 shooting but was 7 of 14 from three-point range. As a team, the Bucks were 10 of 23 from behind the arc. The Bucks’ bench outscored the Heat’s reserves 27-7 with Ilyasova scoring 10 points to go along with his 14 rebounds.