Takeaways from the Heat’s Game 5 loss and a rough third quarter: ‘We stopped guarding.’
Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 121-108 loss to the Boston Celtics on Friday in the Eastern Conference finals at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista. Miami, which is 11-3 this postseason, still holds a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series:
History says the fifth-seeded Heat should still win the series and advance to the NBA Finals. But Game 5 moved the third-seeded Celtics one step closer to overcoming the long odds that come with facing a 3-1 series deficit.
NBA teams that take a 3-1 lead win their series 94.9 percent (244-13) of the time. Also, the Heat owns a perfect 11-0 all-time record in playoff series that it has taken a 3-1 lead in.
But Boston found a way to extend the series and force a Game 6 with Friday’s win. Game 6 is Sunday at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN.
“Our deal was to come out and play, come out and compete, give it our best shot,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said. “I thought we played pretty well in the second half. But we’re going to have to do it again and again because of the position we’re in.”
Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said: “There’s a lot of fight on our team. We came this far. We sacrificed so much. We’ve been here for a long time. If anything, if we wanted to go out, we want to go down fighting.”
While it hasn’t happened often, a 3-1 series deficit has actually been overcome twice in this year’s playoffs held inside the Disney bubble. The Denver Nuggets rallied from a 3-1 hole to eliminate the Utah Jazz in the first round and the Los Angeles Clippers in the second round.
The winner of the East finals will advance to the NBA Finals to take on the Western Conference champion, with the Los Angeles Lakers leading the Nuggets 3-1 in that series. The Lakers can clinch a spot in the NBA Finals with a Game 5 win on Saturday night.
The third quarter was very ugly for the Heat, and it proved to be the difference in Game 5.
Miami entered halftime with a seven-point lead, but it disappeared quickly as Boston grabbed its first lead of the contest with 7:50 remaining in the third quarter and never looked back.
The Celtics outscored the Heat 41-25 in the third quarter to enter the final period with a nine-point lead. It’s the largest point differential Miami has been outscored by in any quarter this postseason.
Take out the third quarter, and the Heat outscored the Celtics 83-80 over the other three periods Friday.
“A little bit of everything,” coach Erik Spoelstra said when asked what went wrong in the third quarter. “I mean, we missed some open shots to start the quarter and then those turned into run-outs that got them going, those easy ones. This is a team that has great offensive firepower. When they see the ball go in the basket, they started to get more aggressive and putting a ton of pressure on us in the paint, much like they did in Game 3 and we weren’t able to shut that off.”
The Heat especially struggled on the defensive end in the third quarter, as Boston’s 41 points tied for the most Miami has allowed in any playoff quarter in franchise history. The Heat also allowed 41 points in the first quarter of a Game 3 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in the 2014 NBA Finals.
Boston shot 13 of 24 (54.2 percent) from the field and 4 of 11 on threes in Friday’s decisive third quarter. The Celtics’ aggressiveness also resulted in 11 of 12 shooting from the foul line in the period.
Boston All-Star Jayson Tatum scored 17 of his game-high 31 points in the third quarter. He also finished the win with 10 rebounds and six assists.
“They started attacking. We stopped guarding,” Heat wing Jimmy Butler said. “Never, never a good thing for us. I think all year long, we’ve said that for us, it needs to start on the defensive end. I think we did that okay in the first two quarters. Then after that, it was all downhill.”
Meanwhile, the Heat managed to shoot a respectable 45.5 percent from the field in the period. But Miami only made 2 of 10 threes.
Veteran guard Goran Dragic helped keep the game from totally getting away from the Heat, as he scored 13 of his team-high 23 points on 5-of-8 shooting in the third quarter. The rest of Miami’s roster combined to score 12 points on 5-of-14 shooting in the period.
The Heat led by as many as 12 points in the first half, but could not hold on. According to ESPN, Miami has lost an NBA-high 18 games this season that it has held a double-digit lead in.
“They were playing harder than we were, which we all knew,” Butler said of captain Udonis Haslem’s message to the team on the bench. “We’ve just got to correct that. That’s where it starts for us. Any time anybody is playing harder than we are, we are not playing our best basketball. I think a lot of it for us comes from how hard we play, how together we play, and we’ve got to get back to doing that.”
The Heat overcame uncharacteristic shaky three-point shooting to take a 3-1 series lead. But Miami couldn’t do it again in Game 5.
For the fourth consecutive game, the Heat struggled to make outside shots. Miami shot 7 of 36 (19.4 percent) from three-point range in Friday’s loss. It’s the worst three-point shooting percentage on a minimum of 30 attempts in Heat playoff history.
Heat forward Duncan Robinson scored 20 points on 3-of-11 shooting on threes in Game 5. The rest of the team combined to shoot 4 of 25 on threes.
This is the continuation of a concerning trend for the Heat, which has shot 26.9 percent from three-point range since the start of Game 2 of the East finals.
“Regardless of whether [the threes] are going in or not, that can’t affect your commitment on the other side of the floor, and it felt like it did,” Spoelstra said.
While just a four-game span, this is one of Miami’s worst three-point shooting stretches of the season. The Heat finished the regular season with the NBA’s second-best team three-point percentage (37.9).
The Heat seems to be missing some open looks from behind the arc, but the Celtics have also earned a reputation as one of the league’s best three-point defenses in recent seasons. Boston held opponents to the NBA’s second-worst three-point shooting percentage (34) in the regular season and has held opponents to the worst three-point shooting percentage (30.4) in the playoffs.
Through the first two rounds of the playoffs, Miami made 14.1 threes per game and shot 38 percent from deep. The Heat has averaged 11.8 made threes on 30.1 percent shooting in the conference finals.
Forward Jae Crowder, who shot 40 percent on threes in the first two rounds, has made 26.2 percent of his shots from behind the arc in the East finals.
The Heat is 2-12 when shooting worse than 30 percent on threes this season.
The Heat’s All-Star duo of Bam Adebayo and Butler was relatively quiet in the loss.
After combining for 20 points on 6-of-12 shooting, 11 rebounds and eight assists in the first half, Adebayo and Butler totaled 10 points over the final two quarters.
Adebayo finished with 13 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. He posted a plus/minus of minus-15, which is his worst this postseason.
“I’ve got to be better. That’s the bottom line. That’s it,” Adebayo said. “There’s no excuses to this. Y’all wonder as a collective unit? This game was on me. I played terrible and that can’t happen, and I know that and I feel like I let my team down.”
Butler finished with 17 points, eight rebounds and eight assists. He was a minus-13, which is his worst plus/minus of the 2020 playoffs.
The Heat used 10 players Friday, and forward Solomon Hill was among the reserves who played for the second consecutive game.
The starting five was the same as it has been throughout the playoffs: Dragic, Robinson, Butler, Crowder and Adebayo.
After using only three reserves in Game 4, foul trouble helped to force Spoelstra to use more of Miami’s depth in Game 5.
Adebayo, Butler and Herro were each called for two fouls in the first quarter.
The result was a Friday bench rotation that included Herro, Andre Iguodala, Hill, Kelly Olynyk and Derrick Jones Jr. Olynyk and Jones did not play in Game 4.
Hill received his first minutes of the postseason in Game 4 and was again used as the third player off Miami’s bench on Friday. After logging four minutes on Wednesday, Hill finished Game 5 with three rebounds and two assists in seven minutes.
Olynyk (four minutes) and Jones (10 seconds) received limited playing time.
Herro followed up his incredible 37-point performance in Game 4 with 14 points on 6-of-12 shooting on Friday.
This story was originally published September 26, 2020 at 1:03 AM.
