Five takeaways from the Miami Heat’s 108-89 loss to the Boston Celtics (17-4) on Monday night at TD Garden to close its winless two-game trip. The Heat (9-10) now returns to Miami to host the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday:
With the Heat and Celtics playing on the second night of a back-to-back set and also battling injury issues, both teams were missing a chunk of their rotation. But the Celtics’ high-volume three-point shooting was still the difference. The Heat played without Jimmy Butler (right knee soreness), Josh Christopher (G League), Nikola Jovic (left ankle sprain), Kevin Love (back spasms), Josh Richardson (illness) and Kel’el Ware (right foot tendinitis).
The Celtics were without Kristaps Porzingis (return from injury management), Jrue Holiday (left knee tendinopathy), Al Horford (left big toe sprain) and Sam Hauser (personal reasons). But those absences didn’t deter the Celtics from continuing to lean on their high-volume three-point shooting attack to win the math equation and the game, as they dominated the Heat 57-24 from three-point range on their way to the 19-point win.
The Celtics entered the contest averaging an NBA-high in threes made (19.1 per game) and threes attempted (50.7 per game). Boston shot 19 of 55 (34.5 percent) from behind the arc on Monday. Meanwhile, the the Heat had a rough shooting night, finishing just 8 of 35 (a season-worst 22.9 percent) from three-point range.
Miami also shot a season-worst 35.6 percent from the field in the loss. “I thought we had some great looks at the basket,” Heat forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said. “Sometimes they just don’t fall. They shoot a lot of threes and it’s our job to try to contest and make it difficult for them. But it’s difficult when you’re not making shots on the other end.” Along with the Heat’s three-point shooting struggles on Monday, it also shot just 18 of 44 (40.9 percent) from inside the paint. That allowed the Celtics to also outscore the Heat 40-30 in paint points. “You hold them under 110, you feel like on the road that should be enough to make it a possession game going down the stretch,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “But that just wasn’t the case.
We would have had to make a lot of those restricted area shots and some of those threes.” The Heat only trailed by three at the end of the first quarter, but the Celtics shot 7 of 15 (46.7 percent) from three-point range in the second quarter to break the game open and enter halftime with a 15-point advantage. The Celtics’ lead grew to as large as 27 points in the second half. Jaylen Brown totaled a game-high 29 points to go with seven rebounds and four assists for Boston.
Jayson Tatum added 18 points, 11 rebounds and four assists for the Celtics. Payton Pritchard contributed 25 points, five rebounds, four assists and two steals off the Celtics’ bench. For the Heat, it was a rough shooting night for nearly every player on the roster. Heat guard Tyler Herro finished with 19 points, but shot just 6 of 19 from the field and 2 of 10 on threes. Jaquez recorded a season-high 19 points to go with 10 rebounds and three assists, but shot just 5 of 14 from the field. He scored most of his points at the free-throw line, shooting 9 of 12 at the charity stripe. “We missed a lot of shots we normally make and that’s been the result a lot this season,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. Adebayo’s season-long shooting slump continues.
Through the first 18 games of his eighth NBA season, Adebayo entered Monday averaging 15.7 points per game on 42.6 percent shooting from the field after shooting better than 50 percent from the field in each of the first seven seasons of his NBA career. Adebayo’s uncharacteristic shooting slump continued in Monday’s loss, as he finished with 15 points on 6-of-18 shooting from the field and 1-of-4 shooting on threes. After making his first shot of Monday’s game — an 18-foot midrange jumper — to open the scoring, he missed his next eight field-goal attempts. He didn’t make his second shot of the night until there was 1:49 left in the second quarter. But after scoring only four points on 2-of-12 shooting from the field through the first three quarters, Adebayo came alive to score 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting from the field and 1-of-2 shooting on threes in the fourth quarter with the Celtics already in full control of the game.
Adebayo, a three-time NBA All-Star, has scored more than 20 points in three of the Heat’s first 19 games this season after doing so in 12 of the Heat’s first 19 games last season. One of the weirdest aspects of Adebayo’s cold stretch is the fact that he entered Monday shooting just 46.2 percent from inside the paint this season after shooting 57.3 percent from inside the paint last season. Adebayo shot just 4 of 11 (36.4 percent) from inside the paint on Monday, including 1 of 4 (25 percent) at the rim. “He’s built a career being able to make those shots and make those look easy,” Spoelstra said. “It’s just one of those stretches that sometimes you can’t explain.” Adeayo continues to do other things well, though. He contributed eight rebounds, five assists and one steal in Monday’s loss and has helped anchor the Heat’s defense this season.
As for the Heat’s injuries, Spoelstra described Butler as “day to day” and said Love “tweaked” his lingering back issue. Butler, 35, missed Monday’s game with right knee soreness after tweaking his knee late in Sunday’s loss to the Raptors in Toronto. With Butler missing four games earlier this season because of a sprained right ankle, he has now been unavailable for five of the Heat’s first 19 games. The good news is that those around Butler are cautiously optimistic that the injury is not a serious one that will keep him out for an extended period. There’s currently no plan for Butler to undergo an MRI or X-ray on the knee. “There’s no change,” Spoelstra said when asked about Butler’s status prior to Monday’s game in Boston. “He’s not playing tonight. We’ll just treat him day to day. He’s still sore. But we’ll see what happens when we get back to Miami.”
With Love, Monday marked the second game that he has missed in the last four games with back spasms. Love, the Heat’s backup center, has now been unavailable for 10 of the Heat’s first 19 games after missing time because of personal reasons earlier this season. “This is the same back deal,” Spoelstra said of Love before Monday’s contest. “He just tweaked it a little bit. It’s not as painful as the initial time. But enough so that he wouldn’t be able to go tonight.” The Heat’s other injured players were Jovic, Richardson and Ware, as they each missed their second straight game with their ailments. Jovic and Richardson did not travel with the team for the two-game trip and remained in Miami, but Ware was with the Heat in Toronto and Boston. With Butler out, the Heat used its fourth different starting lineup of the season on Monday.
But the Heat didn’t stick with that starting group to begin the second half. Jaquez received his first start of the season, opening the contest in Butler’s place. Jaquez began the game alongside the Heat’s four other usual starters — Herro, Duncan Robinson, Haywood Highsmith and Adebayo. “When guys go down, it’s our job to step up and try to fill in those gaps,” Jaquez said of filling in for Butler as part of the Heat’s starting group. “So coming into this game, I knew I had to be aggressive. That was my mentality.” This lineup played just four minutes together this season prior to starting Monday’s game. Unfortunately for the Heat, this starting unit didn’t produce positive results. The Herro-Robinson-Jaquez-Highsmith-Adebayo combination began Monday’s game by being outscored 17-9 during the first 6:28 of the first quarter before the Heat made its first substitution of the night.
The Heat didn’t use that lineup again for the rest of the game. Instead, the Heat made an adjustment and started Dru Smith in Robinson’s place to begin the second half. “A lot of that was some of the defensive stuff that we saw in the first half and then Dru gave us that spark,” Spoelstra said of the decision to start the second half with Smith over Robinson. “… We were just trying to get some better matchups and see if we could shake free Tyler off the ball. That wasn’t necessarily anything with Duncan.” Robinson played off the bench in the second half, finishing Monday’s loss with five points on 2-of-9 shooting from the field and 0-of-6 shooting from three-point range.
The Heat’s injury issues also gave some seldom-used players an opportunity to play. The Heat used Thomas Bryant, Terry Rozier, Pelle Larsson, Alec Burks, Keshad Jonson and Smith off the bench on Monday to complete its 11-man rotation. While Rozier, Larsson and Burks are rotation regulars at this point, Bryant and Smith have fallen out of the Heat’s rotation. And Johnson has spent most of the season in the G League as one of the Heat’s two-way contract players.
With Love and Ware out, Bryant played as the Heat’s backup center after receiving 10 straight DNP-CDs (did not play, coach’s decision). In Bryant’s first game action since Nov. 8, he finished Monday’s loss with two points and two rebounds in 10 minutes. Jaquez’s promotion to the starting lineup created a slot in the bench rotation for Smith, who had played in just one of the previous 13 games. Smith closed Monday’s defeat with eight points, four rebounds, two assists and two steals in 21 minutes in just his sixth appearance of the season.
Johnson, an undrafted rookie, entered for the first regular-season minutes of his NBA career with 4:19 left in Monday’s third quarter. He scored the first points of his NBA career on a dunk, finishing the loss with two points on 1-of-2 shooting from the field in seven minutes. Each of the 11 Heat players who were available played on Monday. The Celtics’ bench outscored the Heat’s reserves 36-21.
