Miami Heat’s Tyler Herro (left) celebrates after scoring against Boston Celtics in Game 2 of their NBA Playoff match.
Photo : AP
The Miami Heat beat Boston with an unprecedented barrage of 3-pointers on Wednesday night to erase the home-court advantage the Celtics worked all season to establish. Tyler Herro had 24 points and 14 assists, hitting six of Miami’s 23 3-pointers — the most in a playoff game in franchise history — to lead the Heat to a 111-101 victory over top-seeded Boston and tie the first-round playoff series at one game apiece.
Bam Adebayo had 21 points and 10 rebounds, and new Celtics nemesis Caleb Martin also had 21 points for the Heat, who shot 53.5% (23 of 43) from beyond the arc to bounce back after a Game 1 blowout. That broke Miami’s playoff record of 20 3-pointers, set against the Bucks in the 2021 first round.
“It was a very good response,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And then we also made some shots. It always looks better when you make shots.”
WATCH Tyler Herro in action against Boston Celtics here…
Jaylen Brown scored 33 points for Boston. Jayson Tatum scored 28, showing no ill-effects of Martin’s hard foul that sent him crashing to the floor with under a minute to play in Boston’s 114-94 victory on Sunday.
Tatum got back up off the parquet floor. But so did Miami.
“They obviously made a conscious effort to have free reign to shoot more,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought most of those were moderately to heavily contested. And so were going to have to make the adjustments on some of those.”
The series moves to Miami for Games 3 and 4 on Saturday and Monday. The Celtics won 64 games in the regular season to claim home-court advantage through the NBA Finals, but they didn’t make very good use of it on Wednesday despite a crowd that was still fired up over seeing their star land hard in the series opener.
Tatum had his first career playoff triple-double on Sunday, scoring 23 points with 10 rebounds and 10 assists in game in which Boston led by as many as 34 points in the fourth quarter. But the big question was how he would bounce back after getting undercut by Martin while going after a rebound.
Tatum started Game 2 and had 14 points in the first quarter. And Martin was heartily booed every time he touched the ball. It only seemed to energize him and the Heat, who needed to win a play-in game to earn the right to face the Celtics.
“He’s a competitor. He’s the ultimate X factor,” Spoelstra said. “He’s the X factor of X factors.”
Miami led by five, 55-50, with two minutes left in the first half before the Brown hit three straight 3-pointers to open a four-point lead. Brown missed a 3 the next time down, but his layup in the final seconds made it 61-58 at the half.
Miami went on a 10-0 run to take an 82-70 lead with under four minutes to play in the third. Boston cut it to six, 102-96, with three minutes left, but Martin hit a 3 and the Celtics never got within two possessions again.