Heath stumbled weakly before losing 102-82 in Boston to reach the 2-2 Eastern Finals – Reading Eagle

Surprisingly, these Eastern Conference finals draw 2-2.

Although the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics have dominated and dominated over the past week.

If good, both were very good.

And if bad, or it was very bad.

Monday night it was a good Boston Celtics and a bad Miami Heat.

In fact, the Boston Celtics are very good and the Miami Heat is very bad.

Lagging behind 18-1 early and 32 later, the Hit failed to take advantage of Saturday night’s victory at TD Garden, this time losing 102-82 at home to the Celtics.

“Apart from these lunatics, you have two really competitive teams,” said Heat coach Eric Spoelstra. “Indicators and things like that don’t really give true evidence of how competitive it is. He can leave any team at any time. That’s what you saw tonight. “

Thus, what started as the best of the seven was reduced to the top three for the right to most likely face the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, while the Warriors won 3-0 in the Western Conference Finals. against the Dallas Mavericks.

“We have guys who love competitions, love those playoff moments, and that’s part of the playoffs,” Spoelstra said. “There are extraordinary ups and downs, extreme lows, a lot of emotion.”

No Heat starter scored double-digit numbers, all five took off before the start of the fourth quarter.

“Everything they have done to us,” Spoelstra said, “we can do with them. None of us are happy with what happened tonight.

“We can be a lot better than we were tonight.”

Forward Jimmy Butler, who served the second half of Saturday’s victory with a sore knee, finished the game with six points in a 3 out of 14 shooting, failing to reach the foul line.

Center Bam Adebayo, who scored 31 points on Saturday, was limited to nine.

And playing Kyle Lowry, in his second game back after missing eight of the previous 10 due to a sprained hamstring, closed three points when shooting 1 of 6.

When Tyler Era’s sixth man was deflected from groin tension, the bench was essentially limited to Victor Oladip, who scored 23 points.

Spoelstra pushed past questions about injuries.

“No,” he said, “we just overplayed tonight.”

Butler said: “There is no excuse for the way I played tonight. You have nothing to do with my knee. ”

The Celtics, who played in the absence of injured Marcus Smart, were in the lead with 31 points from Jason Tatum, while Tatum outscored the entire Heath starting lineup by 13.

“We need to figure out how to win as a team,” Butler said.

Game 5 will take place at 20:30 on Wednesday at the FTX Arena, and on Friday at 20:30 there will be Game 6 at TD Garden.

“Our guys want that,” Spoelstra said. “It simply came to our notice then. The only thing is that you are facing good competition. We all need to find a way to find out together. ”

Five degrees of heat from Monday’s game:

1. Lost at the start: The Heat opened 0 for 14 off the field, their first basket not coming until Oladipo realized a 3-point lead with 3:22 left in the first quarter after the Heat fell behind 18-1.

The Heat start included 0 for 4 from Butler and 0 for 3 from Adebayo.

Heath’s first basket didn’t arrive until Spoelstra corrected Adebayo, Lowry and Max Strus in favor of Davein Deadman, Gabe Vincent and Oladip.

According to ESPN, the one-point “Hit” eight minutes later was the team’s lowest playoff figure in that period in 25 years.

“We were so poor to start this game,” Spoelstra said. “Much of this was our offensive performance, lack of strength, intent and purpose. And then we just dug a hole for ourselves, and at that moment we couldn’t go back and pick up this game. “

The heat then dropped to 1 of 16 from the field before Butler turned the 15-foot jumper with 1:50 left over during that period. Butler later converted the score, the only other basket to hit Heath during the period in which they closed 12 minutes 3 of 20 off the field and lost 29-11.

It was the first quarter of “Heath” with the lowest result since the season in the franchise’s 34-year history.

“They came out and jumped on us,” Spoelstra said. “They came out on that lead and it was a story for the rest of the game.”

So, Lowry said, put it in the rearview mirror.

“I can’t dwell on that too much,” he said. “Let it hurt. Let it sting and move forward. Stay positive. ”

2. Stay alive: Against the backdrop of all that horror, Aladip opened 3 of 3 off the field, 2 of 2 three-pointers and 5 of 6 off the line, at the time getting 13 of Heath’s first 18 points.

“He was definitely the spark that kept us in the game,” Adebayo said.

Oladipo was effectively given over to Erro’s role as the main scorer and facilitator.

If nothing else, it was a kind of showcase for a future free agent.

Aladzipa scored 18 of Heath’s 33 points in the break, and was the only Heath player other than Butler to make more than one shot before the intermission.

“Just aggressive,” Oladip said. “I’m just trying to go in and give us a little boost. Unfortunately, tonight we could not really do it. “

3. Set of points: Unlike Oladip’s killing in the first half, Tatum’s early attempt contributed to something significant, up to 24 points at the break when the Celtics led 57-33.

It was an aggressive Tatum from the start, 12 of 14 off the line at the break, the Heat stage had 6 of 9 free throws.

“The most difficult thing was that he was able to break away, get corners and draw fouls,” said Spoelstra. “It was the hardest part. He was able to get into a good rhythm just by seeing the ball go from the free throw line. ”

It was the third time in four games of the series that Tatum had scored 20 or more in the first half.

4. The hero of prudence: The Heat made the call early, straining Hera’s groin.

At the morning shooting at TD Garden Spoelstra said it was a matter of protecting the Hero from the instinct to break through.

“We just had to be really responsible and make the decision out of his hands,” Spoelstra said, and team doctor Harlan Selesnik consulted with Herro before Spoelstra approached the media. “He really wants to be there.

“Coaches and Dr. Selesnik don’t think it’s the best idea because of the intensity and everything else. But let’s see. He is young. We will treat him day by day and see what happens from there. “

5. Reasonable choice: On the contrary, the Celtics waited about 90 minutes before announcing that Smart had dropped out, unable to contain the swelling around his ankle sprain, which briefly took him out of the game 3.

This led to Derrick White starting for the second time in the series, after replacing Smart in Boston’s loss in the first game when Smart came out of a mid-foot sprain.

White, who missed out on winning the 2nd game of Boston due to the birth of a son, immediately came out and scored the first seven points of the game, to 11 at the break.

“He chose his places well,” Celtics coach Imo Udoke said of White, who scored 13 points, eight rebounds and six assists.

()