MIAMI — With attrition taking its toll on both sides – any team that makes it this far is festooned with injuries – the night started at a drudging, groggy pace.
All it was going to take was even a merely above-average night from someone to steal this one, and Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, both after slow starts, raised their respective shooting hands.
Tatum and Brown rebounded from slow first halves, combined to score every point in a 14-2 run in the fourth quarter, including three treys from the latter and one the former, to ignite a 93-80 Game 5 win over Miami. The Celtics thus took a 3-2 Eastern Conference Finals lead, with Game 6 set for Friday night in the Garden.
Brown finished with 25 points, including 5-for-9 3-point shooting, and Tatum busted out with a 20-point, 10-rebound, nine-assist near-triple double.
The Celtics, back to full health Wednesday night, are now 26-4 since January when they start the lineup of Tatum, Brown, Al Horford, Rob Williams and Marcus Smart.
The Celtics closed out the third with a 10-0 run for a 69-58 lead. Tatum followed up a four-point first half with a nine–point third. The slow nature of the game considered, all it was going to take was a moderate rise by the Celtics star to break the game open.
Brown opened the fourth from the left corner, Tatum came back with five straight points, including a corner 3 off a give-and-go dish from Horford, Brown added two more bombs, for an 83-60 lead by virtue of the 14-2 run.
Tatum then snuffed a 6-0 Miami spurt with a baseline jumper, and when Duncan Robinson cut the lead to 87-71 from downtown, Brown split the lane with a soaring dunk.
Miami clamped down from there, and cut the C’s lead to 13 points on a Gabe Vincent 3-pointer. But with 2:09 left, after significant missing on both sides, Tatum hit twice from the line for a 91-76 lead. Brown spun into the lane the next time down to push the lead back up to 17 with 1:32 left.
Tatum (1-for-9) had four points and Brown six points and four turnovers by the break, with the Celtics completely out of sorts in the offensive end. Still, they were within reach, with the equally cold Heat holding a thin 42-37 lead.
The Celtics opened the third with their most energy of the night and an 8-0 run for a brief three-point lead. But with the pace accelerating, the Celtics responded. Smart’s buzzer-beating trey was good for a 52-48 lead, and a Tatum 15-footer gave the Celtics a six-point edge. their biggest to that point.
And then, following a 5-0 Miami spurt that cut the Celtics lead to a point, Grant Williams buried a 3-pointer that triggered a quarter-closing 10-0 burst for a 69-58 lead.
Unlike in the previous two games, neither side had a haymaker to unload. Both sides also looked tired as they felt each other out and generally struggled to make shots, as evidenced by Tatum’s 0-for-4 first quarter. Brown was worse, with four first quarter turnovers, and everything considered, the C’s were fortunate to be only trailing by two points (19-17).
Tatum missed two more early in the second quarter. Overall, the Celtics missed seven straight before Tatum’s first basket, a 3, cut the Miami lead to 24-20 with 8:07 left in the half.
But the Celtics, back to their mistake-prone ways, picked up their 10th turnover with 2:35 left on a Tatum charge. Adebayo and Tucker closed the half out with back-to-back put-backs, and Miami carried a 42-37 lead into the break.
