Heat takes commanding 2-0 lead in East finals with another road win vs. Celtics. Takeaways

The Miami Heat’s trip to Boston proved to be a very successful one.

After winning Game 1 in Boston, the Heat also took Game 2 on the road with an impressive 111-105 comeback win over the second-seeded Celtics on Friday night at TD Garden.

“For us to be able to will out this win, this is a good one for us,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said.

The Heat holds a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series, as the East finals now shifts to Miami for the next two games. The Heat is two wins from becoming just the second No. 8 seed in league history to advance to the NBA Finals.

The Celtics led by 12 points with 10:35 left in the fourth quarter, but the gritty and relentless Heat refused to quit. Miami closed the game on a 34-16 run led by the greatness of Jimmy Butler and Adebayo.

Butler totaled nine points on 4-of-8 shooting from the field in the fourth quarter. He closed the win with 27 points, eight rebounds, six assists, three steals and two blocks.

Adebayo contributed eight points, eight rebounds and four assists in the fourth quarter. He finished the win with 22 points, 17 rebounds and nine assists.

“Their competitive spirit. Their competitive will,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Adebayo and Butler following the game. “They compete to win, and they understand that you have to do it on both ends of the court. ... We follow them. We follow them with their spirit, their competitive will, night in, night out.”

The Heat also leaned on its zone defense down the stretch, limiting the Celtics to 22 points on 7-of-18 shooting from the field and 1-of-8 shooting from three-point range in the fourth quarter. Boston scored just 0.9 points per possession on the 19 fourth-quarter possessions the Heat used zone, according to Synergy Sports.

The result: The Heat dominated the fourth quarter 36-22.

“They do a good job of mixing up of when they go zone, and when they go man, they keep you on the toes with the people that they got on the floor,” Celtics forward Jaylen Brown said. “We just haven’t figured it out in terms of how to exploit it every single time down the floor.”

The Celtics made one last push to cut the deficit to two points with 21.6 seconds to play, but Miami closed the door by hitting four straight free throws after intentional fouls from Boston. Gabe Vincent hit two free throws to extend the Heat’s lead to four with 19.3 seconds remaining and Max Strus made two free throws to increase the Heat’s lead to six with 8.4 seconds left and seal the win.

The Celtics finished the loss just 10 of 35 (28.6 percent) from beyond the arc. Jayson Tatum scored a game-high 34 points for the Celtics.

A confrontation with Celtics forward Grant Williams in the fourth quarter seemed to fuel Butler. With Boston ahead by nine, Butler converted on a shot in the paint while drawing a foul on Williams with 6:22 to play and the two immediately went forehead to forehead and exchanged words.

Butler made the free throw to complete the three-point play and went on to push the Heat to the comeback victory.

“It’s just competition,” Butler said of the incident. “I do respect him, though. He’s a big part of what they try to do. He switches. He can shoot the ball. I just don’t know if I’m the best person to talk to.”

The Heat trailed by 12 points in the second quarter and fourth quarter and somehow still rallied for the win. Miami is now an incredible 6-2 this postseason when trailing by double digits.

Game 3 of the series is Sunday in Miami (8:30 p.m., TNT).

Five takeaways from the Heat’s Game 2 win over the Celtics on Friday:

Adebayo and Butler were the two best players on the court when it mattered, as Tatum was again quiet in the fourth quarter.

While Adebayo and Butler combined for 17 points in the fourth quarter, Tatum scored just five points on 0-of-3 shooting from the field and 5-of-5 shooting from the foul line in Friday’s fourth quarter.

Tatum has yet to make a fourth-quarter field goal through the first two games of the series. He did not even attempt a field goal in the fourth quarter of the Celtics’ Game 1 loss, scoring all six of his fourth-quarter points on Wednesday at the foul line.

With Tatum’s underwhelming finishes, the Celtics have shot just 3 of 16 (18.8 percent) from three-point range in the first two fourth quarters of the East finals.

“Whatever we can,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said of the team’s defensive strategy against Tatum in the fourth quarter. “He’s a force offensively. Like we were saying with Jimmy, he draws so much attention. He’s one of the best scorers in the league. We just do anything that we can to throw bodies at him and give him different looks and different coverages.”

It appeared that Tatum was on his way to a big performance, too. He erupted for 15 points in the third quarter to enter the fourth with 29 points before going cold in the fourth quarter.

“We know what he can do in the fourth quarter,” Spoelstra said of Tatum. “We were watching that previous series. He’s a great player. He deserves the respect of our efforts to try to make it tough.”

Tatum’s co-star, Brown, wasn’t much better, recording three points on 1-of-5 shooting from the field and 0-of-2 shooting from three-point range in the fourth quarter of Game 2. Brown struggled all night, finishing the loss with 16 points on an inefficient 7-of-23 shooting from the field and 1-of-7 shooting from beyond the arc.

“I think they outplayed us,” Brown said. “They out-toughed us tonight and they found a way to make plays down the stretch and we didn’t.”

Aside from Adebayo and Butler, Martin was the Heat’s most important player in Game 2.

It’s been a season filled with different roles and responsibilities for Martin. He started in his first 49 appearances before moving to the bench role that he’s flourishing in this postseason.

Martin turned in his best playoff performance yet in Game 2 on Friday, setting a new playoff career-high with 25 points on 11-of-16 shooting from the field and 3-of-7 shooting on threes in 32 minutes off the bench.

With the Celtics daring Martin to be a scorer by sagging off him and putting Celtics big man Robert Williams on him, he made them pay by hitting a few threes and also using his speed and athleticism to get into the paint. Martin totaled 12 paint points on 6-of-7 shooting in Friday’s win.

“He’s an important playmaker for us,” Spoelstra said of Martin. “... If they are going to play way off of him, he’s now had a lot of months of knocking down those kind of shots. But also off the dribble, making plays and those timely winning plays.”

Martin’s best stretch of the night came in a 12-point second quarter. With the Heat trailing by as many as 12 points in the second quarter, Martin provided a spark off the bench to help Miami turn things around to enter halftime with a four-point lead.

Martin has been the Heat’s third-leading scorer in the playoffs behind only Adebayo and Butler, averaging 12.2 points per game on an efficient 55.2 percent shooting from the field and 39.7 percent shooting from three-point range this postseason.

“That’s just me doing my job and creating space and making things easier on our main guys,” Martin said.

Along with Martin’s contributions, Duncan Robinson also was important to the Heat’s comeback. Robinson scored eight of his 15 points in the fourth quarter.

The Celtics were one of the NBA’s best three-point shooting teams in the NBA this regular season, but that hasn’t been the case to begin the East finals.

Including the Celtics’ rough 10-of-35 (28.6 percent) three-point shooting display in Game 2, they are at 20 of 64 (31.3 percent) from beyond the arc through the first two games of this series.

This is surprising, considering the Celtics entered the conference finals shooting an NBA-best 39.5 percent from three-point range in this year’s playoffs.

Boston also closed the regular season with the second-most made threes in the NBA behind only the Golden State Warriors, recording the league’s sixth-best team three-point percentage (37.7 percent) on the second-most attempts (42.6 per game).

Efficient high-volume three-point shooting is a big part of the Celtics’ formula and it simply hasn’t been there to begin the East finals.

The Celtics are 36-2 this season when they shot 40 percent or better from three-point range and 29-30 when they shoot under 40 percent from deep.

The Celtics made a change to their starting lineup in the middle of Game 2 that will probably stick for Game 3.

Boston moved Williams into the starting lineup late in the second round and that move helped the Celtics rally from a 3-2 series deficit against the Philadelphia 76ers.

But the Celtics’ starting lineup of Marcus Smart, Brown, Tatum, Williams and Al Horford has not been good to begin the East finals.

This five-man unit was outscored by the Heat by 10 points in nine minutes together in Game 1 and outscored by six points in five minutes together in Game 2.

That was enough for Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla to change things up, beginning the second half of Game 2 with the smaller starting lineup — featuring Derrick White instead of Williams — that they’ve used for most of the season.

Despite the loss, this lineup with White in Williams’ place was effective on Friday. This group outscored the Heat by seven points in 11 minutes together in Game 2.

With those positive results, the expectation is the Celtics will open Game 3 with this smaller lineup.

The Heat did something no team has done in two years.

Entering Friday, Game 1 home losers had won 16 straight Game 2s with an average margin of victory of 17.3 points.

But the Heat ended that trend, becoming the first road team to win the first two games of a playoff series since the Dallas Mavericks did it against the Los Angeles Clippers in the 2021 playoffs. The Clippers rallied to win that first-round series in seven games.

The odds are now heavily on the Heat’s side. Entering this year’s playoffs, teams that won the first two games of a best-of-7 series went on to win the series 92.2 percent of the time (308-26).

“We feel a certain way about getting these two games, but we are well aware of who they are, what they are capable of,” Spoelstra said. “Just in these first two games, they have gone on big runs on us. So we have to stay focused on the task at hand and get ready for a big battle in Game 3.”