The Celtics blowout a Jimmy Butler (toe) and Kyle Lowry (personal reasons)-less Miami Heat team 122-92. And while it would be easy to take some credit away from the C’s, they deserve their flowers tonight. 

Finally, the bench and other role players contributed with points. 4 other players aside from Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum scored in double digits. Boston’s bench put up 37 points compared to Miami’s 23 bench points. Al Horford finally produced offensively with 14 points and Marcus Smart hit 4 threes. 

Jaylen Brown was the leading scorer with 29 points in 31 minutes. Brown shot 57.9% from the field and 33.3% from deep. Tatum was the only player with a double double leading the team in rebounds with 12 and 20 points. 

From the jump — the C’s got to an early lead being up 10 points. Erik Spoelstra of course letting his team figure it out by not calling a timeout. The Heat fight back and tie up the game at 32 each. But the Celtics regained control in the second quarter. By halftime the Celtics took the lead back at 54-45 and never looked back. 

“We got our physicality back,” said coach Udoka. “Credit to our guys. They bounced back and finished out the half, then carried it over to the third quarter.”

In the second half the Celtics continued to share the rock and make plays for each other. Most importantly, Celtics played good defense forcing Miami to commit 18 turnovers. Robert Williams was able to clean up on the glass. Celtics dropping 40 points in the third quarter alone outscoring Miami 15 points. From there, the onslaught began.

A surprising Max Strus was the Heat’s leading scorer with 27 points making 9 threes. Tyler Herro and Bam Adebayo had a quiet night combining for 25 points. Robert Williams played a large role trying to contain Bam and it made an impact. Duncan Robinson was only able to make 2 trey balls. 

Despite Miami not having their two veteran players in Lowry or Butler this was a solid home win against a eastern conference team. They were able to knock the Heat into the second spot so far in the standings. Hopefully they bench can keep this production up.

Celtics will play the Hornets tomorrow night.