Miami Heat of America youngster, Bam Adebayo led his side with four assists and 12 rebounds on Wednesday night, but the team’s rookie, Tyler Herro turned out to be the match hero with a career-high 37 points in their 112-109 victory over Boston Celtics, megasportsarena.com reports.
Adebayo also got 20 points in the Game 4 win that put Miami 3-1 ahead of Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, with and Jimmy Butler adding 24 to the haul, as The Heat held off their hard-fighting rivals and move within one win of USA’s National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals.
While Adebayo again chipped in his very best on the night, his efforts were clouded by 20-year-old Herro, who made 14-of-21 shots off the bench to continue his dynamic play-off run and helped The Heat grab a 3-1 advantage in the best-of-seven series.
Goran Dragic had 22 points, and Gordon Hayward hit a pair of free throws to tie the score at 40 with 3:38 left in the first half but unlike in each of the first three games, when The Heat fell behind by double digits, Miami opened up a 58-46 lead early in the third quarter, as Adebayo’s side responded with a 10-4 run to lead 50-44 at the break.
Prior to their current run, The Heat’s largest lead of the series was eight, but they appeared to falter when Jayson Tatum led The Celtics with 28 points, all coming in the second half, and Jaylen Brown had 21.
Kemba Walker scored 20, Hayward 14 and Marcus Smart had 10 points and 11 assists and Tatum, who was scoreless on six shots in the first half, came to life with 16 points in the period, as The Celtics closed to 77-76 entering the fourth quarter.
Boston surged ahead for the first time since the opening minute of the second period on a Daniel Theis dunk with 8:51 to go in the game but an Adebayo basket and five points from Herro to reach 30 on the night put Miami up 91-85.
After Tatum hit a trey, Dragic responded from deep and Herro added a lay-up to put Miami up by nine with 56.2 seconds remaining and, just as Boston got within three again on a Brown three-pointer with 16 seconds to go, free throws by Herro and Butler helped Miami hold on.
The Heat upped their advantage to 98-90 on Herro’s fifth three-pointer with 4:09 left. Brown hit a trey and Smart added a lay-up to get the Celtics within three, but Dragic and Butler each made short buckets to reset the margin to seven; given Adebayo’s side the chance to wrapped up the series in Game 5 in the early hours of Saturday morning (1:30am Nigeria time).
