Celtics stave off elimination, ride second-half run to beat Heat in Game 4
This Heat playoff joyride hit a speed bump on Tuesday, a hurdle not big enough to derail its postseason run but significant enough to give Boston new life.
Ahead 3-0 in the Eastern Conference finals and ahead by nine early in the third quarter, the Heat helplessly watched the Celtics unleash an 18-0 run in the third and a 12-0 spurt in the fourth and never recovered from either, succumbing 116-99 at Kaseya Center.
The Celtics outscored the Heat 66-43 in the second half, staved off elimination and forced a Game 5 on Thursday in Boston (8:30 p.m., TNT). Miami leads the series 3-1.
Celtics All-NBA forward Jayson Tatum, who had struggled with turnovers and erratic shooting in this series, was at the epicenter of both of those runs, as was Marcus Smart.
Tatum scored 25 of his 33 in the second half, adding 11 rebounds and seven assists.
Smart scored all 11 of his points in the second half.
“It’s definitely disappointing,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said. “That would have been a perfect situation [to end it]. Everyone knows we typically don’t get things the easy way. This is right up our alley.... This could be good for us.”
This one turned in a lopsided third quarter in which the Celtics outscored Miami, 38-23, and shot 61 percent from the field (14 for 23). The Heat, meanwhile, shot 36 percent in the third (8 for 22) and committed five turnovers that led to 10 Celtics points.
After the Heat closed an 11-point deficit to five in the fourth quarter, Boston unleashed that 12-0 spurt to push its lead to 17, essentially settling matters.
Celtics three-point shooting, deficient for the first 3 1/2 games of this series, suddenly became a strength, as it had been during the regular season.
Boston — which shot 9 for 25 on threes in the first half — hit 7 of 12 threes in the third, turning a nine-point deficit into an 88-79 lead after three. Boston, overall, made 9 of 20 threes in the second half to close at 40 percent on three-pointers.
“They got cleaner looks than they did in the [first three games], but that’s who they’ve been all season long,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “They are not going to shoot that poorly that many times in a row. They were getting out in transition, which they’ve been trying to do, and they knocked down some threes, got a two point lead and from that point mostly had control of the second half.”
In the second half, Tatum shot 11 for 15, including 3 for 5 on threes.
“Tatum had some good clean looks in transition, open threes, end of possession stuff,” Spoelstra said. “You’re not expecting a great player like Tatum to have multiple off nights. You have to do things that will exceed it.”
The Heat, meanwhile, made only 14 of 40 shots in the second half, including 3 for 16 on threes. Miami closed at 25 percent on threes (8 for 32).
Heat turnovers also were costly in the second half; Miami committed 10 of them in second half, including three by Bam Adebayo.
Jimmy Butler scored 15 in the third but missed his first four shots in the fourth quarter and closed with 29 points and nine rebounds. There wasn’t enough second-half support around him.
Adebayo (10 points, five rebounds) went scoreless in 17 second half minutes, taking only one shot and snagging just two rebounds after intermission.
And the Heat’s supporting cast, brilliant for 3 1/2 games, couldn’t keep up with Tatum in the second half.
Martin opened 6 for 6 in a 14-point first half but shot 0 for 3 from the field in a two-point second half.
Martin, who finished with 16 points and four rebounds, entered averaging 19.0 points per game, trailing only Vinnie Johnson’s 21.0 per game (in 1991) for highest scoring average by a bench player in conference finals history.
Kyle Lowry shot 2 for 8. And Duncan Robinson, off a 22-point Game 3, shot 1 for 5 on a two-point night.
“Defensively, they took advantage of our ball handling,” Spoelstra said. “We were a little bit late getting into our stuff. [Our] offense hurt as much as [our defense]. We played a little bit slower; there wasn’t a lot of flow to the offense and they capitalized on that. We were a little bit stagnant offensively that led to that lack of flow on both ends.”
The Heat survived two first-half Celtics bursts, including a 17-5 run that put Boston ahead 37-34.
With Martin scoring 11 in the second quarter and Adebayo 10, the Heat closed the second quarter on a 13-6 run to lead 56-50 at the break. Miami, in that first half, seized on four turnovers from Tatum and more subpar shooting from the Celtics (9 for 25 on threes, 5 for 9 on free throws).
Miami stretched the lead to 61-52 early in the third before everything changed.
Tatum began an 18-0 Celtics avalanche with two threes. Derrick White then tied it with a three, and Jaylen Brown put the Celtics ahead on a layup, off a Max Strus turnover.
Brown then stole the ball from Butler and Tatum hit a floater, followed by a three from Smart and two free throws from Smart. And just like that, a nine-point Heat lead had become a 70-61 deficit.
Butler, who had missed seven shots in a row, ended the Celtics run with a basket, and his 15 in the quarter helped the Heat close within 81-77.
But Tatum hit a jumper and drove for a layup, and Grant Williams hit a three, and suddenly the lead was up to 11.
After the Heat closed to within five early in the fourth, the Celtics quickly pushed it back to nine with a Tatum jumper, a Brown basket after Derrick White blocked Robinson, and a Smart basket after Grant Williams blocked Butler. Then Tatum and Smart hit threes, and suddenly the lead had ballooned to 100-83.
And so the Heat still needs one victory to become the second No. 8 seed to advance to an NBA Finals and became the first team since the 1959 Minneapolis Lakers to advance to the Finals after being outscored in the regular season.
What does Butler say to his teammates?
“The only thing I’m going to say is we’ll be OK, knowing we’re going to win and we will,” he said. “We just have to play harder.”
INJURY UPDATE
Kyle Lowry and Gabe Vincent (ankle), who both appeared in discomfort at different parts of the game, said afterward that they’re fine. Spoelstra said Vincent would be re-evaluated on Wednesday.
This story was originally published May 23, 2023 at 10:55 PM.
