Comeback Heat do it again, rally past Celtics
LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA. » Down by 14 in Game 1, the Miami Heat found a way.
Down by 17 in Game 2, they did it again Thursday night. And after making the Boston Celtics lose another big lead on the court — as well as their cool in the postgame locker room — the unheralded Heat are two wins away from the NBA Finals.
Goran Dragic scored 25 points, Bam Adebayo led a big third-quarter rally to finish with 21, and the Heat pulled off another comeback to beat the Celtics 106-101 and take a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals.
“We got grit,” Adebayo said. “That’s about all I can tell you. We got grit, man.”
Duncan Robinson scored 18 points, Jimmy Butler had 14, Jae
Crowder 12 and Tyler Herro 11. The Heat were down by 17 in the second quarter and trailed by 13 at halftime.
They had been 0-21 in playoff games when trailing by at least that many at intermission. They’re 1-21 now, and two wins away from their first NBA Finals since 2014.
“We like to make it hard on ourselves,” Butler said. “We like being down double-digits and being the comeback kids.”
Kemba Walker had 23 points for Boston, which got 21 apiece from Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Brown missed a corner 3 that would have tied it with 15 seconds left, and Butler sealed it with two free throws with 7.4 seconds remaining.
The Celtics had a loud, animated conversation in their locker room postgame, the
walls unable to hold in the sound. They tried to downplay whatever was happening afterward.
Dragic — playing on the third anniversary of his fondest basketball moment, leading Slovenia to the European Championship — scored nine points in the fourth quarter.
The Heat took a 2-0 series lead for the 11th time in coach Erik Spoelstra’s tenure. They’ve won all previous 10 instances. Game 3 is Saturday. The Heat got in big trouble in the series opener by scoring 18 points in the first quarter and 16 points in the third.
And then it all changed.
Miami outscored Boston 37-17 in the third quarter, with Adebayo — the defensive hero of Game 1 — outshooting and nearly outscoring the Celtics by himself. Boston went 4 for 12 from the floor in the quarter, Adebayo went 7 for 8 on his way to a 15-point period and the Heat led 8477 when it was over.
They showed some fight in the fourth. The Celtics went on a 15-2 run, silencing the Heat for nearly seven minutes and going up 94-89 on a 3-pointer by Walker with 4:25 left.