Five members of the C’s 15-man roster, including all three of their backup centers, were out for Sunday’s game with various injuries. Two were rookies, not quite ready for the big stage of Celtics-Heat on national TV. An eighth Celtic, Nate Robinson, has battled knee pain this week and played only five minutes Sunday. A ninth, Paul Pierce, who has injuries to his left foot and right hand, played 40 minutes but shot 0-for-10 from the floor.
The Celtics began the season as the league’s deepest team. They’ve transformed into the shallowest — but they still stuck it to the Miami Heat for the third time this season, holding on for an 85-82 win in a dramatic fourth quarter.
“We’re shorthanded, but we’re not short of heart and grit,” said Kevin Garnett, who played 36 minutes. “We work hard. We come out and here and compete. We’re at home. We’re still a good team. We’re without some major pieces in here, but that doesn’t mean we’re not a good team at the same time.”
The Celtics came out sluggish and scored just 15 points in the first quarter. They trailed for most of the first half, but they came out firing in the third quarter and rattled off a 20-3 run. They finished the period having outscored the Heat 35-18.
While Heat coach Erik Spoelstra tinkered with his lineups all afternoon, throwing a smorgasbord of different looks at the tiring Celtics, C’s coach Doc Rivers stuck with the same seven guys. They held on for a big win, getting one last stop on the final possession as Mike Miller missed a game-tying 3.
“It was obviously a huge win for us, with all the stuff we have going on,” Rivers said. “You think about the injuries — Nate had actually said he wasn’t going to play, literally five minutes before the game, and then he came up and said he wanted to give it a go. Paul said he felt awful. We literally were thinking at one point we wouldn’t have enough bodies to play this game. So to gut it out was great.”
Spoelstra shuffled his rotation by throwing in Miller, Eddie House, Joel Anthony, James Jones and Erick Dampier. For the most part, Rivers had just two guys — Glen Davis and Von Wafer, and both held their own on the big stage. Davis finished with 16 points, second-most on the team behind Garnett’s 19; Wafer finished with 10 and changed the game with his energy on defense and in transition.
“The bench won the game in the first half,” Rivers said. “They got us back into it. You know, it was amazing watching the two units play. The first unit was kind of dragging, all of them except [Rajon] Rondo. And then the second unit comes in, and we don’t change anything, but just everything was quicker, harder and more desperate. They made things happen. Von and Baby were absolutely huge for us. Terrific.”
This was no doubt a scary loss for Spoelstra and Miami’s trio of superstars — they’re now 0-3 against the Celtics this season, including a loss to a shorthanded C’s team that had no business stealing one Sunday. But as for the Celtics, they’re trying not to read too much into it.
“Today was just us winning another game,” Pierce said. “By no means can you take anything away from Miami, because it is mid-February, and they’re going to be a different team in March, in April, and in the more important months where we’ll probably have to see them again. It’s a good win, definitely — it gives us the series in case something happens with a tiebreaker. But as far as a message, I don’t know.”
“I don’t know, it’s too early,” Rondo agreed. “We have one more game against those guys. But we just want to keep getting better. We needed this game. We didn’t want to lose three in a row, and we wanted to protect home court. It was a big game for us.”
