The Miami Heat had the Celtics right where they wanted them going into halftime.
Through two quarters of play in a pivotal Game 5 matchup at FTX Arena, the Heat held the lead against a Celtics team sputtering on the offensive end.
Boston’s star tandem in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were held in check — sinking just three of their 16 shots from the field. Both players have been prone to sluggish performances during this postseason run, but that 19 percent shooting slump stood as their worst combined field-goal percentage in any half this entire season.
Be it Miami’s opportunistic defense or Boston’s sloppy execution, the C’s turned the ball over 10 times in the first half — with the Heat generating 12 points off of those miscues. Even with Rob Williams back on the court for the second-straight contest, Boston labored on the glass — with P.J. Tucker and the Heat snagging nine offensive boards over those 24 minutes, leading to 16 second-chance points.
Put all of those unsightly stats together, and you had a Heat team striding back into the locker room with a lead … of just five points.
Ooof.
As ugly as the Celtics played through the first half of Wednesday’s showdown in Miami, the Heat matched them with their propensity for bricked shots and middling performance, entering the break with just 42 points.
Sooner or later, those shots were going to fall for at least one of these two teams.
And for as much as Jimmy Butler and the Heat likely would have embraced Game 5 devolving into a scrappy, defensive rock fight, you can only keep a team featuring likes of Brown and Tatum contained for so long, especially when most of their flaws were off the self-inflicted variety.
In an Eastern Conference Finals series that featured just four lead changes through the first four games, Wednesday’s slim halftime lead for the Heat ultimately amounted to very little — with the Heat’s inability to go for the jugular against a laboring C’s team paving a path for Boston to put itself on the cusp of a trip to the NBA Finals.
Of course, in the immediate aftermath of Boston’s eventual 92-80 victory in Game 5, it can be easy to chalk up Miami’s impotent offensive performance to a Heat roster littered with banged-up contributors.
While Tyler Herro was the lone rotation player that outright missed Wednesday’s matchup due to injury, it’s been evident for some time that Butler (knee) is far from 100 percent — while Kyle Lowry is also hampered by a hamstring issue.
But Erik Spoelstra wasn’t going to take that route on Wednesday night.
"No, look, we are not going to make any kind of deflection or any kind of excuse,” Spoelstra said of Miami’s injury. “Boston beat us tonight. And let's be clear about that. There's guys that are far from 100 percent on both sides."
It was an astute observation, one that should further discourage a Heat team that is already pushed to the brink.
Yes, the Heat’s star talent has been ineffective for extended stretches now. Butler shot just 4-for-18 from the field over 40 minutes of play, while Miami’s starting backcourt of Lowry and Max Strus is now just 1-for-28 over the last two games.
But the Celtics aren’t faring much better when it comes to the injury report. Sure, the C’s had a full complement of players with Marcus Smart (ankle) and Rob Williams (knee) back on the court, but you didn’t have to be a doctor or a basketball maven to see that both starters were clearly hampered by their ailments.
Add in a shoulder issue for Tatum that has clearly afflicted his shooting mechanics, and the Celtics weren’t exactly primed to take advantage of a Heat team that was also firing blanks.
But give credit where it’s due. While the Heat only sank four of their 23 shots in the third quarter, Boston ensured that Miami’s failure to deliver a knockout punch would prove costly on their own court.
Boston’s depth (namely Al Horford and Derrick White) allowed them to tread water in those laborious early minutes, but a refocused gameplan and inevitable surges from star players like Brown (19 second-half points) allowed the C’s to eventually steamroll Spoelstra’s team down the stretch.
“Look, they are a great defense,” Spoelstra said of Boston. “It's not like we are going to score 130. What I'm looking at is are we getting shots in our wheelhouse, shots that are in our strength zones. If we are missing some of those shots, you can't just panic and try to reinvent things. I know how ignitable our guys are. That can turn in a hurry, particularly on the road.”
It’s true. All it takes to shift momentum in a series is a few shots finding twine in enemy territory.
The Heat are banged up. But shooting 31.9% from the field — including 15.6% from 3-point range — in such a critical game could also be attributed to just some poor luck, right?
In most situations, I’d agree.
But this Celtics defense has also been licking its chops against the Heat all year, with Miami’s three worst shooting performances this season all coming at the hands of Ime Udoka’s crew.
this defense man pic.twitter.com/HK0myXokSY
— Max Lederman (@Max_Lederman) May 26, 2022
That doesn’t exactly bode well for the Heat in a Game 6 in Boston — when the margin of error for Miami will, by their own doing, be extremely slim.
Just where the Celtics want them, I'd say.
