It’s Dragic’s turn to be the star
Explain it? Explain
10-1 in the playoffs? Explain coming back from Thursday’s 17-points deficit? Explain being outscored15-2 in the fourth quarter - and still cruising to a 106-101win in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
There’s only oneway to explain any of that: Itwas Goran Dragic’s turn this time.
All this crazy run, the storyline has been there is no single storyline. It’s not just Jimmy Butler scoring 40 points, not Tyler Herro taking un-rookie like shots, not just Bam Adebayo making a block for the ages.
Thursday had Dragic making all the shots he’s been making in the first half nowin the final minutes. That’s all.
“That’s the thing about this team – you never know who’s going to have a big night,” Adebayo said..
It started for Dragic in a 95-95 game when he drove into Boston’s Kemba Walker with the kind of coin-flip call— charge or block?— that went hisway. Block, the call came. Dragic made the two free throws to put the Heat up, 97-95.
Then he made a 3-pointer as the shot clock ran down. Five-point lead.
With 57.1 seconds left, his jumper made it 104-98 and, well, nowyou could see what once looked like the unlikeliest of finish lines from there. Now Dragic, who finished with a game-high 25 points, pumped his fists after that final jumper.
This doesn’t feel like it’ll be a seven-game series. More like a 27-game series. Each game has four or five mini-games stuck inside it.
Look at Thursday. Boston dominated the first half and stretched its lead to 17 points in the third quarter. The Heat then outscored Boston 37-17 by that time that third quarter finished.
In Boston, they spent the hours since Game1 talking about therewas too much isolation-style dribbling at the
end of that loss andwondering if GordonHaywardwould return from a nasty ankle injury. Or when hewould.
Nowthey have a few other things to consider. What happened to them in that third quarter? Howdid they forget howto play pick-and-roll defense? Why did Adebayo go off?
“We stopped playing on both ends,” Boston coach Brad
Stevens said on ESPN before the fourth quarter.
The seven third-quarter turnovers?
“We didn’t cut at all, we didn’t pass at all, we didn’t play at all,” he said.
TheHeat, meanwhile, will spend the hours until Saturday night playing the GuardAgainst-Human-Nature game. A 2-0 lead is a nice lead. You can see the end from there, if you care to look. But the idea is not to look. Not now. Not yet.
Even at the end Thursday, the storywas of surprise. After the Heat led by seven points at the end of that staggering third quarter, Bostonwent on a 15-2 run to lead by five. You see what’s atwork here? Everything’s atwork. Everyone’s in play. Anything happen no matter the score, the moment or your gut saying the night’s over with.
These bubble playoffs are fraught with lessons. Denver has twice come back from 3-1 series deficits to advance. You think you’ll hear about that from the Heat coming up?
The staggering stat is theHeat are 10-1 in the playoffs. Think about that. They had a nice, 44-win season. They’ve turned it on in amanner few teams have done inNBA history.
It has been so revealing, so telling, you keep telling yourself this can’t go on. Itwas like Boston shooting 58.1 percent in the first half Thursday. That couldn’t go on, right? And it didn’t. Therewas the mathematician’s regression to the mean. And the man.
Can theHeat keep this streak going?
What makes it more staggering is there’s no Alpha Star on this team. Not like LeBron. Or, um… well, this is the playoffs where the Alpha Stars have gone down. Three of the four teams left showthat much: Denver, Boston and theHeat.
Dragic isn’t a mega-star. He just keeps hitting big shot after big shot these playoffs. Itwas his turn in Thursday’s fourth quarter. The team with a new hero every night had Dragic this night.