It’s been a tricky spot for the Celtics all season. Entering Wednesday, they were 0-4 in their return to TD Garden following any road trip longer than two games.
Make that 0-5.
Boston had its nine-game win streak snapped Wednesday night with a 124-103 home loss to the Miami Heat. The Celtics nearly erased a 22-point third-quarter deficit but faded in the fourth, prompting head coach Joe Mazzulla to play his backups for the final five minutes.
“They played better than us tonight,” Mazzulla said.
Jaylen Brown returned from a one-game absence to lead the Celtics with 24 points on 10-of-20 shooting and nine rebounds. Jayson Tatum had 16 points and seven assists on a poor shooting night (4-for-17, 2-for-9 from 3-point range). Luke Kornet went 7-for-9, scored 14 points, grabbed six rebounds and was the only Celtics starter to finish with a positive plus/minus.
Brown called his performance “a good step forward,” though he admitted he still dealt with pain in his injured knee.
Tyler Herro (25 points), Bam Adebayo (21 points) and Kyle Anderson (19 points off the bench) were the top scorers for the Heat, who have won six straight as they battle for Play-In Tournament seeding.
The Celtics sat veterans Kristaps Porzingis, Jrue Holiday and Al Horford, continuing their trend of lightening key players’ workloads to prepare for the postseason. They’ll host the Phoenix Suns on Friday night.
Asked about Wednesday’s result being essentially meaningless, as Boston has been all but locked into the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference for the past several weeks, Mazzulla replied: “We’re all pissed. We all hate losing, and that was my message.”
“At the end of the day, it doesn’t have much of an impact,” he added. “But it still sucks, and we’re all miserable right now.”
The Celtics had won 10 of their previous 11 meeting with the Heat, with the lone loss coming during last year’s first-round playoff series.
Kornet started with Porzingis and Horford sidelined, and the 7-footer dominated early. In his first eight-minute shift, Kornet scored 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting and grabbed three rebounds, all at the offensive end. Two of those rebounds led to putbacks, including one off a Payton Pritchard miss that drew a roar from the Garden crowd.
The fourth man on Boston’s center depth chart didn’t fare nearly as well. The game was tied at 17-17 when Neemias Queta subbed in for Kornet. When Queta headed back to the bench nine minutes later, the Celtics were down 40-28, with the Heat grabbing six offensive rebounds. Queta had just two defensive boards during that stretch.
Queta was a minus-15 in the game, while Torrey Craig, who also saw extended run for the shorthanded C’s, was a team-worst minus-23. Kornet also ran into foul trouble in the second quarter, limiting his minutes.
Midway through the second, with the Celtics down 44-31, Mazzulla was hit with a technical foul for vociferously arguing a foul call with referee Tyler Ford. He continued to protest as Herro attempted Miami’s 12th free throw of the game. Boston had attempted just two foul shots to that point, but that disparity evened by halftime.
Mazzulla’s anger seemed to briefly spark the Celtics. Derrick White hit a midrange jumper on the next possession, then pulled off a highlight-reel chase-down block on Adebayo after losing control of the ball at the opposite end. That block led to a corner three by Pritchard. A minute later, White was fouled on a 3-pointer by Davion Mitchell, who was T’d up while pleading his case to officials.
Despite that flurry, the Celtics faced a daunting 59-45 deficit at halftime. They shot the ball poorly in the first half (37.2% from the field, 3-for-18 from three), and consistently looked a step slow on defense. Haywood Highsmith closed the half with a buzzer-beating corner three, and Miami stretched its lead to 22 points in the third quarter.
Then, the Celtics’ shots started falling, and the Heat’s double-digit cushion quickly evaporated.
It took Boston just under four minutes to cut a 22-point deficit down to eight, which it accomplished by hitting six 3-pointers in eight tries – two each by Brown and White and one by Tatum and Sam Hauser. A 14-1 Celtics run triggered an Erik Spoelstra timeout, and Boston proceeded to score on its next two possessions, as well. A corner three by rookie Baylor Schierman made it 77-74 Heat with 4:28 remaining in the third.
Miami’s offense then stabilized, and the visitors rebuilt a 10-point lead by the end of the quarter — aided by yet another technical foul, this one on Tatum. It was 91-81 entering the fourth.
The teams then traded blows for the next five minutes. After Pritchard blocked a Herro shot in the paint, Brown bulled through Pelle Larsson for a layup that made it a five-point game – only for Miami to respond with eight straight points, including a Larsson three.
After Mitchell added another three moments later, Mazzulla had seen enough. He pulled his starters with 5:02 remaining and the Celtics down 111-96, closing the game with newly minted G League MVP JD Davison, Scheierman, Drew Peterson, Jordan Walsh and Queta. Davison, Peterson and possibly Walsh will travel to Westchester, N.Y., on Thursday to Maine Celtics in Round 2 of the G League playoffs.
The Heat are a possible first-round playoff opponent for the Celtics – who almost certainly won’t pass first-place Cleveland in the East – but not the most likely one. Miami entered Wednesday two games back of Orlando and Atlanta, which were in a virtual tie for seventh and eighth in the East. The No. 2 seed plays the winner of the 7 vs. 8 play-in game, so odds are Boston will face either the Magic or Hawks as its quest for back-to-back championships begins in earnest.
But Miami, which has surged of late after losing 14 of its first 17 games after the Jimmy Butler trade, could still vault past one of those teams, as could 10th-place Chicago.
“You never know what could happen,” White said. “I mean, us playing Miami in the playoffs would not surprise me because it happened every year I’ve been here. We’re just trying to control what we can control, and when we figure out who we play, we’ll be ready to go from there.”
Regardless of the opponent, the Celtics are just ready for the real games to begin.
“I’m looking forward to those moments,” said Brown, who said the team has a plan in place to get him as healthy as possible before the playoffs. “A lot of our guys are primed. They’re experienced. They’re ready for a big moment. It’s that time of the year, so let’s get ready.”
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