Miami Heat proves they are still contenders after a big win over Boston Celtics.
The last 10 days have been a rollercoaster for the Miami Heat. We’ve seen their worse of worse, but Wednesday night we also saw a glimpse of their best. Against the Boston Celtics, on the road, the Heat had to send a message.
And that’s exactly what they did.
Not only did the Heat turn in their best performance in a month, but they proved to the rest of the Eastern Conference that this team isn’t done just yet.
After a four-game stretch in which the Heat stacked bad loss after bad loss, Miami got back on track earlier this week in a game against the Sacramento Kings. But, that was something that needed to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, it was the Kings.
However, against the Celtics, the Heat continued to prove that perhaps they had solved some of their issues.
Against the Kings, the Heat made some rotation changes that were aimed to help fix the team’s spacing. Even though it wasn’t as successful against the Celtics, it proved to have an impact in certain situations.
Jimmy Butler, very much in favor of the Heat's rotation changes.
— Wes Goldberg (@wcgoldberg) March 29, 2022
"It corrects a lot of our spacing. It lets everybody know where the ball has to go and where everybody is supposed to be at on the floor." pic.twitter.com/YUNN9HHpUd
And has the Heat playing back at a high level, something that clearly wasn’t happening when they were losing to a undermanned Philadelphia 76ers and Golden State Warriors teams.
Against the Celtics, Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Kyle Lowry played fantastic basketball in leading the Heat to victory. Even though the team’s overall defense should get love, especially for holding the Celtics to just six points over the last five minutes of play, it was also encouraging to see their big three rise to the occasion.
If the Heat is going to make a deep run in the playoffs, they’re going to need their big three to play as they did against the Celtics. Miami’s big three accounted for 64 points, 15 rebounds, and 18 assists.
Because of their elite defense, the Heat are probably going to win most games when they get that much production out of their big three.
More than anything, the Heat broke out of their funk Wednesday night against the Celtics. They are back in first place in the East standings and with five games left are sitting in prime position to clinch homecourt throughout the postseason.