The Eastern Conference Finals are now tied after the Boston Celtics dominated the Miami Heat in the fourth game to a 102-82 victory Monday night. He was never very close, as Boston took advantage of Miami’s shooting struggles to take a 24-point lead at the break and never looked back from there. Jayson Tatum led the way for the Celtics with 31 points, eight rebounds and five assists, but it was really a team effort as four of the five Boston starters scored in double figures.
Victor Oladipo took the scoring load of the Heat when he finished with 23 points. The Heat struggled all night to get anything offensively and as a result will now return to Miami with the series tied at two games each. The fifth game will take place on Wednesday in Miami, as both sides try to gain an advantage in a round-robin battle.
Here are three conclusions from Boston’s win over Miami in Game 4.
1. Bounce night for Tatum
Tatum finished the third game with just 10 points in 40 minutes of action. The Heat defended him incredibly well in that competition, as he only threw 21.4 percent from the field and was 1 of 7 from 3-point territory. His scoring performance was one of the main reasons the Celtics lost that game, even though Jaylen Brown came out on top by 40 points. So it was obvious that Tatum would try to start early in Game 4 to avoid a repeated performance from his previous game.
He advanced fast until Monday night and Tatum surpassed his total points from the previous game with two minutes left in the first quarter. Not only was he making easy shots, something he struggled with in the 3rd game, but he also knocked down some incredibly difficult looks even though the Miami defense was covered all over him. On several occasions he drove to the edge and contorted his body just to avoid possible blockages from Bam Adebayo and end up strong on the edge. He still struggled to make things go long-term, but he enjoyed what the Heat gave him on the edge and from the mid-range. It’s the exact type of performance the Celtics needed from Tatum after a disappointing performance in the 3rd game, and his aggressive play from start to finish helped lead his team to equal this series before returning to the road.
2. A historically bad night in attack for the Heat
Miami started Game 4 by missing their first 14 shots in a row and fell behind by 17 points in the process. A triple from Oladipo with 3:22 at the end of the first quarter put an end to the drought, but by then Boston had already gained a 14-point lead, and the game felt really over from then on. . Miami, with just one point in the first eight minutes of the game, were the lowest points of a playoff team in the last 25 years of the league. To make matters worse, Miami’s 11 points in the first quarter were the lowest in franchise history. The Heat finished the night shooting just 33.3 percent from the field and 38.9 percent from 3-point territory, and as a result this game ended with just a few minutes left in the third quarter. .
So yeah, you could say it was a tough day at the Heat office. Those shooting struggles only increased the importance of Tyler Herro on this team, which was down for Game 4 with a groin injury. Iron’s ability to create his own shot, while creating goal opportunities for his teammates, is critical to Miami’s success, and his absence was deafening Monday night. Oladipo did his best to fill the gap on the bench as he led all of Heat’s scorers with 23 points, but when Bam Adebayo, Kyle Lowry and Butler combined for just 18 points, Miami won’t win many games. These 18 points from the Heat starters were the least scored by a team’s starting lineup in a playoff game since the 1970-71 season. Tatum, meanwhile, scored more points (31) than the five Miami starters combined (18).
Although the Heat struggled a lot in Game 4, it should be noted that Butler, Lowry, Gabe Vincent, Max Strus and PJ Tucker appeared on the injury report, in addition to Herro who went into this showdown. Butler has been dealing with knee inflammation and didn’t play in the second half of Game 3 because of that, so it’s unclear how much it affected his performance Monday night. While all the teams remaining in the playoffs are facing a variety of injuries, Monday night it was clear that some of the Miami players were feeling the effects of this relentless playoff schedule. We’ll have to see how the Heat respond to Game 5 at home, because if they show up playing as they did in Game 4, they should expect the same result again.
3. Go back and forth this series
The story of this series has been about which team can go out and run and keep it going. In the first game, Miami beat Boston by 24 points in the third quarter, which ended up being the difference mark in that game. In the second game, the Celtics returned the favor by beating the Heat by 25 points in the second half and keeping their foot in the gas in that victory. Miami responded to Game 3 with a 39-point performance in the first quarter that helped take them to what ended up being a hotly contested game.
With the explosion of Game 4 in Boston, the issue of the winning team with a big advantage continued, and as this series returns to Miami for Game 5, we’ll have to see if that trend continues. That’s not how I expected this series to go considering how great both teams can be on defense. So the idea of either team getting these huge advantages that, for the most part, have made a difference in the game has been really surprising. It seems that neither team has been able to establish consistency from one game to another, so this trend is likely to continue for the rest of this series. So if you are the Heat, despite the poor performance of Game 4, you should feel good about your chances of recovering given the rocking nature of this series.