This game felt like the entire Miami Heat season — there were spurts of athletic, beautiful play, but they couldn’t sustain it. They wilted after the All-Star break. They wilted in the second and third quarters of this game when they shot just 29 percent in the face of Boston’s pressure. They could not make the plays at the end, reverting to hero ball.
The Celtics — those “old” Celtics with the tired legs — out ran the Miami Heat down the court all night long. They out worked inside a Heat team that was at home and got one of their big three back. Boston played with more energy and precision.
Boston ground Miami down, wore them down and executed better with an 18-8 run in the final minutes to win 94-90 and take a 3-2 series lead. Boston can close it out and punch their tickets back to the finals Thursday night on their home court.
Both teams played right to their stereotypes. And Miami is never going to hear the end of it.
Boston played poorly in the first half, but they used defense and grit to keep it close. The Celtics started the game 4-of-17 shooting. Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Rajon Rondo combined to shoot 7-for-29 to open the game. But late in the second half Boston started getting the ball inside to Garnett (who finished with 26 points) and they just found a way to hang around. They were down two at the break.
They withstood another Heat rally and after three quarters were up five — they threw a mix of zone and man-to-man defenses at the Heat that kept Miami off balance.
“They had a great rhythm in that first eight minutes of the game,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said after the game in a televised press conference. “We had to do something, honestly, just to take them out of that rhythm.”
They did. Boston is a great defensive team and Miami can be pressured out of its system and into poor isolation plays. Miami shot just 39 percent as a team and players not named LeBron James (30 points) or Dwyane Wade (27) shot just 31.4 percent. Miami also shot just 26.9 percent from three and that was key — they couldn’t stretch out the Celtics defense and make them pay.
Chris Bosh was supposed to help change that, and he did at first. Bosh’s played pretty aggressively from when he stepped on the court and just and having athletic body out there helped the Heat spacing. Bosh’s got his first bucket when he got deep position after Greg Stiemsma helped off him on a Wade/LeBron pick-and-roll. Bosh got the ball deep and hit a turn around bank shot. But that didn’t last. At the end of the third he was part of the lineup that got taken apart, so he didn’t play in the fourth.
In the end, Miami played to their stereotype of individual ball with no team concepts on offense. It was all LeBron and Wade, no other Heat player scored in double digits. And those two guys are not enough against good team basketball. It was that way last year in the finals, it is the same way this series against Boston.
Miami was up 6, 78-72, with 6:13 left and they wilted. It started when Wade made a fantastic block on Brandon Bass that Rondo saved to Mickael Pietrus for a three. Boston remained calm. They kept defending. They kept grinding and getting balanced scoring — five Celtics scored in double figures (Pierce had 19). They weren’t great but with their defense they just have to be good enough.
And they fight for it. In a way we just have not seen the Heat do when tested. For the second straight game, LeBron and Wade didn’t even go to the interview room to take questions. It doesn’t look good, it looks like a group of individuals and not a team.
It’s hard to see how that changes before Game 6, but if it doesn’t this series will be over.
