ESPN NBA

As you get ready for Sunday's nationally televised showdown between the regrouping Heat and the resurgent Celtics, here are five reasons why leaving Boston with a victory will be a very difficult task for Miami if LeBron James and Co. don't bring their "A" game to the Garden.

The management of lineups has been an exercise in compromise for the Heat all season long. In his effort to find the right combination of skills and size to complement LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has tinkered from the moment of the opening tip in Boston on Oct. 26 until the fourth quarter of the clincher Wednesday night.

Despite the gifts of these three stars, this hasn't been an easy task for Spoelstra, because the menu of options at both point guard and center presents serious limitations. The Heat's best offensive lineups require defensive sacrifices. The most athletic combinations often require the stars to play out of their natural positions and comfort zones. And the role players with whom Spoelstra is most viscerally comfortable can hamper the team's offense at times.

Spoelstra's opening night point guard, released by the team several weeks ago, spent the conference semifinals on the opposing bench yelling out play calls for the Celtics. He's had a procession of three centers come and go from the starting lineup. On Wednesday night, Spoelstra decided that a fourth choice -- Juwan Howard -- might be his best second option. Spoelstra went for long stretches without a point guard on the floor, scrapped the experiment, then picked it up again. He flirted with smaller lineups with Bosh as the only big man, and perimeter-heavy units that situated James at the power forward spot flanked by either Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Joel Anthony.

The Heat finished Game 5 on a 16-0 surge, and the five-man unit on the floor for 14 of those 16 points consisted of Wade, James, James Jones, Bosh and Anthony. Prior to their 4-minute, 48-second stint Wednesday, this combination had seen a collective 23 minutes and change together in the postseason and only nine minutes or so in the regular season.

Both before and after Wednesday night's rally, the lineup including Jones and Anthony has been destroying the competition, outscoring opponents 124-94 per 100 possessions. We have to chalk some of this success up to good luck, of course. When James drains a 3-pointer over two defenders, as he did with 40 seconds remaining in Game 5, the other four bodies on the court could just as well be Arthur, White, Getty and McClanahan.

But when you go to the video, the wisdom of this unit becomes apparent: With this group on the floor, the Heat don't have to compromise very much. They're able to maximize Jones and Anthony while limiting these role players' liabilities, thanks in large part to James and Wade.

Anthony has been a pet project of Spoelstra's dating to the center's early days with the organization in 2007, yet even Spoelstra likely had reservations about how pressure defenses like Boston and Chicago might exploit Anthony's presence on the court. By pairing Anthony with Jones, the Heat's best floor spacer, Spoelstra is able to compensate for the defense's inattention to Anthony. Since Boston, like Chicago, likes to crowd the strong side and bring a third body (often Anthony's man) into the potential path of the attacker, whether it's James or Wade.

Don't the Heat lose something by not having a point guard on the floor? Not at all. During the 32 minutes this unit has seen together, the majority of the Heat's non-transition possessions fall squarely into one of two general categories: High pick-and-rolls for Wade or James and "elbow" sets.

In the first, Wade or James handle the ball -- the play is for them. In just about every pick-and-roll action for Wade or James, the third perimeter player on the floor -- whether that's Mario Chalmers, Mike Bibby, Jones or Eddie House -- spots up behind the arc. No ball-handling skills required.

When the Heat go into their elbow sets, the nominal point guard has a single ball-handling responsibility: Feed the "4" man at the elbow (usually Bosh or James). After that, the point guard clears to the corner where he sets a screen to release the man on the wing (usually Wade or James). When the the Heat run these sets without a point guard, Wade and James assume the task of feeding the elbow and clearing.

Jones has been the Heat's fourth-best offensive player this season and the team's only consistent long-range specialist. Every lineup can use a guy who can space the floor, but against the brand of pressure executed by Chicago and Boston, having a weakside threat to keep the defense honest is even more vital. The Bulls, like the Celtics, are forever pulling to the strong side. Without a release valve or a place to reverse the ball against that pressure, an offense can get strangled in the half court.

Defensively, Anthony needs no introduction to anyone who has watched Heat basketball over the past six weeks. Miami is more than 19 points stingier per 100 possessions when Anthony is flying around the floor, trapping ball handlers, recovering to the paint, darting along the baseline to block shots and generally making life miserable for anyone in an opposing jersey trying to score. He and Bosh have established a sharp mode of communication as the Heat's frontcourt defensive tandem. In short, the Heat can't achieve level of aggressiveness they need to defensively if Anthony isn't on the floor.

What about Jones? He's a very slight 6-foot-8, but he's a strong system defender who makes few bad decisions. Jones can guard Luol Deng a dynamic player but not necessarily an isolation scorer or a post threat. This affords Spoelstra the flexibility to put James and Wade on Derrick Rose. Spoelstra will throw several different bodies at Rose throughout the game, but in crucial possessions, James and Wade remain his best options. Having Jones on the floor gives him that luxury.

We often flog coaches for not establishing firm rotations in the postseason, but Spoelstra's constant experimentation in the Boston series might have unearthed something invaluable -- a rarely-used five-man combination that could be a magic bullet against the NBA playoffs' top seed.

MIAMI -- The score was 87-85, with the Boston Celtics ahead of the Miami Heat with three minutes left.

Kevin Garnett hurried to meet Chris Bosh as the Heat power forward received a pass off a pick-and-roll with LeBron James. As Garnett approached him, Bosh faked a jump shot and Garnett bit hard. Momentum carried the 34-year-old in one direction, and the 27-year-old went the other.

And just like that, Bosh blew by Garnett off the dribble and dunked the ball uncontested. Garnett, tired and beaten, could only watch Bosh’s ascension from below.

It was in that moment that the torch was effectively passed from one Big Three to the next.

In those final three minutes of Game 5, the Heat’s famed trio scored 12 points while the Celtics' accomplished trio scored zero. As a result, the Heat went on to win the game, 97-87, and the series, 4-1. James, Bosh and Dwyane Wade had finally beat Boston in the playoffs for the first time in their careers.

This is the matchup the Heat wanted all along. They wanted to face the Celtics, the team that three-and-a-half years ago laid down the blueprint of three superstars -- Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce -- coming together for the common goal of winning a championship.

“If we would have went through this playoff series without playing Boston at any point, it wouldn’t have been right,” Wade said after Wednesday's Game 5 victory. “The Celtics laid the blueprint for us to show us how to do it. Hopefully we can continue to carry on the blueprint they laid.”

In the days leading up to Game 5, James said Boston provided the inspiration for him to join forces with Wade and Bosh in their summer of free agency. On Wednesday, they left no doubt who was worthy of moving on and contending for the 2010-11 Eastern Conference championship.

For the series, Miami’s Big Three outscored Boston’s Big Three by more than 100 points (355-252). In the final quarter of the series, the dominance was even more apparent -- James, Wade and Bosh combined for 24 points while Allen, Pierce and Garnett tallied just two points. Boston’s three simply were outplayed and outlasted by Miami’s.

“We have the ultimate respect of them as champions,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “They have inflicted so much pain on us. From afar, we’ve been able to monitor and see how those guys sacrificed. There are a lot of examples in this league where players let their egos and other things get in the way. Boston didn’t. Those three guys really set the tone and paved the way for other teams to fall in line.”

But for all the talk about the blueprint, Miami’s Big Three is different from Boston’s. Sure, it wwas built from the same mold in number and star power. But stylistically? It's a different breed and, this season, a superior breed.

The Celtics' trio of Allen, Pierce and Garnett complement each other seamlessly without overlap. Allen is the tireless sharpshooter. Pierce is the elbow virtuoso. Garnett is the man on the block. They fit together perfectly like puzzle pieces, with distinct lines separating their roles on the court.

But Wade, James and Bosh are not puzzle pieces, because they have no defined shape as basketball players. The lines are blurred and, most of the time, nonexistent.

Those who said they couldn’t work together because Wade and James were redundant missed the point. Wade and James work together because their only redundancy is versatility. They do not have specific and defined roles like the Celtics' trio did, and their unpredictability makes them almost impossible to stop consistently.

“A lot of people doubted [us],” James said. “We knew [it would work]. We’re two unselfish guys; we knew for the better of the team that we were going to make it work. It was just going to take time.”

To make it work, the Heat took the blueprint and made it their own.

Their versatility is why Bosh said after the game that no one can defend Wade and James.

“They’re so multidimensional,” Bosh said. “You can hit them in the post, off catch-and-shoots, in the open court, in the fast break, 3s, pick-and-rolls. ... I mean, there are so many different ways that we use them and so many different ways that they’re dangerous that you can’t pay attention to everything.

“It’s great. I play with the two best players in the league.”

In the Boston series, the Heat’s versatility ultimately made the difference, allowing them to go small and play big with their best three players on the court. James took turns guarding every position 1 through 5, guarding Celtics center Jermaine O’Neal and Garnett on one end of the floor while running the Heat’s offense on the other. At 6-foot-4, Wade played like a big man, averaging 6.8 rebounds and blocking shots while dunking putbacks on the Celtics' defense.

And Bosh? He’s the most rigid of the Heat’s trio, but even he stepped out of his comfort zone and played the center position when the game mattered most. He’s the rare power forward who can play on the block, put the ball on the deck and shoot anywhere inside the arc. He’s inside-out, left-to-right and up-and-down, as Garnett found out on that fourth-quarter dunk.

James’ 33-point performance marked the 39th time in his career that he has scored 30 or more points in a playoff game. But Wednesday was the first time a teammate did too, as Wade scored 34 points of his own.

“You are not beating a team like the Boston Celtics with one guy as the focal point of the offense,” Wade said. “At the end of last season last year I knew that. That is why I said, ‘Next year I am not going to put myself in this position.’ I am going to go out and recruit help.”

In this series, Boston couldn’t keep up. The Celtics showed their age, looking completely gassed in the final minutes of each of their four losses. But as outdated as they looked in this series, they are established. They set the standard by which the Heat measure themselves.

“They’re at 17 championships, and we have one,” Wade said. “We have a long way to go. They’ve done a lot of work. They can rest now.”

The final moments of the Heat-Celtics Eastern semifinals belonged to LeBron James. He defeated his longtime nemesis, the team that embarrassed him in the 2010 playoffs and ultimately chased him out of Cleveland. For one night, if only for one night, James vindicated the hype that has surrounded him since he graced the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high-schooler and the hype that has surrounded him since he came to Miami.

And none of it would have been possible if Dwyane Wade didn't put on one of the best performances of the playoffs.

Throughout the first half Wednesday night, James looked just as flummoxed as he did trying to attack Boston's defense in Game 3 of this series, as well as in Game 5 of the infamous 2010 conference semifinals. Boston shut down James' lanes to the basket, and his passes failed to find their targets all night. Meanwhile, the Celtics maintained a lead over the Heat for nearly the entire first half and threatened to pull away on multiple occasions.

Fortunately for the Heat, Wade was on the scene, and he put on an absolute masterpiece of a performance to keep the Heat alive in the first half. The book on James and Wade has always been roughly the same: Do your best to keep them away from the rim, but if they're making their jump shots, pray for mercy, because you're not going to stop them.

That's not entirely the case with LeBron, who is bigger and stronger than Wade and probably would beat him in a 40-yard dash scenario, which makes him a more powerful basket attacker. And there's no question that LeBron is a better outside shooter; as LeBron has shown throughout this season and this series, he's quietly become one of the better outside-shooting high-usage perimeter players in the league.

Wade, meanwhile, is still a mediocre jump shooter. According to 82games.com, Wade's effective field goal percentage on jumpers was 43 percent, compared to James' 47.3 percent, and Wade is not really a threat from 3-point range unless he can step into his jumper.

Also, Wade obviously is smaller than James and his top speed is slightly slower. However, Wade has something James doesn't have -- the best change-of-direction ability in the NBA. It might be possible to get in front of Wade, but it's completely impossible to stay in front of him. He can accelerate and change directions in the blink of an eye, and he complements his agility with creativity, flicking shots and passes while moving his body at what seem to be geometrically impossible angles.

Unlike James, Wade can turn a drive into a jumper or a sure charge into a smooth "euro-step" floater in mid-dribble, and that's why he truly is unstoppable when his jump shot is falling -- there's no way to slow down a player who can be anywhere at any time and put in a shot from that spot.

In the first half of Game 5, the Celtics were forced to simply behold Wade's offensive mastery when they would have rather been ensuring a return flight to Boston. Wade made all four of his shots from outside the paint in the first half, forcing the Celtics to try to step out and defend his shot. When they did that, he blew by them and got to the basket. When they tried to trap him, he slithered through it like Barry Sanders, making a cutback to get space.

Wade made pull-ups. He made floaters. He went left; he went right. He grabbed an offensive rebound, flipped it in the basket and got fouled in a single motion. He missed a bunch of free throws on the night, but all that really did was prove Wade is a human being and not a basketball machine made of smoke, pistons and hexagonal padding.

When LeBron is on his game, he overpowers defenses with thundering drives to the basket and bombs from the perimeter. When Wade is making his jumpers and is feeling the flow of the game, he doesn't overpower defenses -- he dissects them.

This is the power of the Heat. Even with ball movement out the window, LeBron struggling, shooters missing open shots from beyond the arc and one of the league's three best defenses facing them down, they still were able to stay in the game by having one player break down the defense essentially by himself.

Eventually, Wade passed the baton to LeBron, and the rest is history. But without Wade, LeBron's shots in the fourth quarter would have long since been rendered irrelevant. Even when all the good synergy the Heat have spent so much time developing over the season goes awry, they still have two players who can put an offense on their back, and LeBron and Wade took turns doing so in order to close out the Celtics.

Whose performance was better? That's almost impossible to say. All we do know is that when whether LeBron at his best or Dwyane at his best is in question, the outcome of the game almost never is.

MIAMI -- Joel Anthony couldn't resist. It was an imminently blockable shot, the kind of schlock he's been sending back at opponents all season.

Glen Davis was working down low against James Jones at the two-minute mark of the first quarter. As Davis dribbled into the lane, poised to go up for a hook shot, Anthony darted over to contest. As Anthony elevated, he hacked Davis on the arm.

The foul was Anthony's second.

"I was just telling myself, 'This is not happening,'" Anthony said. "It's the biggest game of the year for us and you're in foul trouble. It's such a helpless feeling knowing you have to go to the bench."

That fateful second foul by Anthony prompted Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra to insert reserve big man Juwan Howard into the game. Prior to rising from the bench, Howard had logged seven minutes of playing time during the postseason, and had yet to play against the Boston Celtics.

"When Joel got into foul trouble, it forced our hand to come in a little bit quicker into our rotation," Spoelstra said.

It wasn't long ago that Spoelstra referred to his rotation in the middle -- consisting of Anthony, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Erick Dampier -- as the "three-headed center." With Howard tapped as Anthony's replacement on Wednesday night, the creature has apparently sprouted a fourth head. When Anthony picked up his third foul about two minutes into the third quarter, Howard found himself on the floor for a 12-minute stint, well into the fourth quarter of a tight contest.

"I prepare myself like I’m a rotation player," Howard said. "Tonight my name was called and I was just trying to help out."

Spoelstra and Howard's teammates were complimentary of the veteran's performance -- such is the luxury of victory. Howard gave a full effort and scrapped during his 19 minutes, but they weren't entirely productive. Both of his shots were swatted away by the Celtics, the first a layup attempt on the break by Kevin Garnett, the second a running hook in the lane by Nenad Krstic. Howard was whistled for a charge when he stuck his shoulder out on a screen and plastered Ray Allen. Forty-five seconds later, Howard was slow to recover on Krstic, giving the Celtics' center an open baseline jumper that broke a 71-71 tie.

"It's challenging," Howard said of coming in cold to play meaningful minutes for the first time in weeks. "It's not easy at all. But you just have to stay mentally tough, and you have to keep your mind focused on the game and what's happening out there on the floor."

Had the Heat dropped Game 5 at home, Spoelstra would've likely been skewered for leaving Howard on the floor for 19 minutes. The alternatives were imperfect, but Spoelstra could've opted to go small, subbing in James Jones and sliding LeBron James over to the power forward slot. James would've been responsible for Jermaine O'Neal, then Glen Davis, on the defensive end. Those aren't ideal matchups for James, but for a guy who has defended everyone from Rajon Rondo to Marcus Camby this season, those aren't outlandish assignments.

When Paul Pierce picked up his fourth foul midway through the third quarter and was replaced by Jeff Green, Spoesltra had another opportunity to bring in one of his swingmen and go smaller. But Spoelstra opted to stick with Howard.

"It was tough," Spoelstra said. "When you change a lineup, you never know what the domino effect will be down the line."

Throughout the season, Spoelstra endured challenges with his rotation. Apart from James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, the Heat were paper thin. Spoelstra tinkered with his five-man units. More important, he designed a package of sets and defensive coverages that allowed for players to slide into any number of positions on the floor.

Coaches take undue criticism for not nailing down a firm rotation by the first week in December, but using the regular season as a laboratory to experiment with different units has tangible benefits.

"We've taken flak for that year, how guys have been thrust into situations, how they play minutes or don't play minutes," Jones said. "But tonight was an example of just how that musical-chairs rotation prepared us for moments like this. Because, in the playoffs, nothing is scripted."

Spoelstra improvised boldly by relying on Howard, who ultimately took a seat with the Heat trailing 79-72 with 9:52 remaining in the game. From that point, Miami outscored Boston 25-8 the rest of the way, a triumphant outburst that enabled Howard to morph from a potential scapegoat to heroic stand-in.

Even in basketball, history is written by the victors.

Can Dwyane Wade and LeBron James get to the rim at will again?
The success of the Celtics’ defense is predicated on overloading the strong side of the court and preventing easy dribble penetration by a ball handler. However, in Game 4, James and Wade were driving into the teeth of the defense effortlessly, generating 18 shots at the rim and combining for another 23 free throws. Even accounting for the overtime period, that’s far above their normal rate against Boston this series.

How did they do it? LeBron worked his way to the rim with variety. He flew out in transition on some occasions, cut to the rim off the ball on others and punctured the Celtics' defense using a standard pick-and-roll. Like Wade, if you give LeBron a ray of daylight, he’ll exploit it to his full advantage. LeBron took a while to put his aggression into high gear, but by the time the fourth quarter rolled around he was fully engaged in attack mode.

The Heat ran a ton of pick-and-rolls with Wade as the ball handler, but they threw different screeners nearly every other time down the floor. LeBron, James Jones, Chris Bosh, Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Joel Anthony each got their hands at picks for Wade, who split Boston’s defenders like an ax.

The array of screeners kept Kevin Garnett, Boston’s best defender, away from Wade’s attack, although they did target Garnett in the pick-and-roll down the stretch. Wade picked apart the defense and once he turned that corner, it was all over. The Celtics didn’t dedicate themselves to swarming the ball handler like they typically do, and Wade dodged his way to the rim.

There’s not a dependable way to combat LeBron and Wade in the pick-and-roll, but you may see more aggressiveness from the Celtics at the point of attack in Game 5.

Are the Heat unbeatable if Chris Bosh plays well?
Those who feel Bosh is the X factor in the Heat's title aspirations bolstered their case in Game 4. After he had a miserable 19 minutes in the first half, Bosh recovered offensively in the second half and helped keep the Heat in the game. His two buckets in overtime were perfectly representative of everything he brings to the table. He scored as a baseline cutter off a Wade-James pick-and-roll, then sealed the game with a tip-in with 24 seconds to play.

Bosh's 20 and 12 stat line aside, his biggest contribution -- both in Game 4 and the series -- has come as a defender, which might come as a surprise. For all the consternation about the situation at point guard, lack of depth and the rest of it, frontcourt defense had to be a nagging doubt for the Heat headed into spring. Sure enough, the decisive factor in Heat's Game 3 loss was the Heat's inability to disrupt Garnett on the low block -- and Bosh knew that.

"We couldn't let him catch it on the post," Bosh said. "We wanted to be more aggressive with our fronts, try our best to push him out a little bit further away from the basket."

Watching Bosh battle Garnett, communicate vocally with Anthony when the two shared back-line duties and contest every potential entry pass were some of the more heartening things for the Heat on Monday night. The Celtics will undoubtedly adjust in Game 5. Rather than just try to feed Garnett in the post, they'll run some down screens for Garnett, hit him with a pass off their single-double actions for Ray Allen, or get him going from midrange.

If Bosh can respond without needing help, that will allow the Heat's wings to play aggressively rather than reactively -- and should produce another efficient defensive performance.

Is the Heat's smallball their best ball?
The Heat played all but three possessions of the fourth quarter of Game 4 with a frontcourt of Bosh and James. The result?

They outscored Boston 17-13 in a pitchers' duel.

Proponents of Heat smallball shouldn't be discouraged by the 17 points. If you watch the catalog of the Heat's fourth-quarter attempts, you'll see a nice selection of shot from close range the Heat failed to convert but would happily take again tonight. The spread floor produced driving lanes for Wade and James to attack the rim. And with Bosh luring Garnett -- the Celtics' only big man on the floor -- out of the paint, there were no big bodies to contest the Heat inside. On the couple of occasions Garnett dropped back to help, Bosh exploited the decision by establishing position underneath (see the layup with 5:17 left in regulation to give the Heat the lead).

When a game becomes a perimeter-oriented affair, the Heat might be the best defensive team in the league. In those closing 12 minutes, James and Wade either locked down their individual matchups or, when they were patrolling the weakside, pressured passing lanes and swarmed the middle.

So do the Heat go without a center during crucial stretches in Game 5?

That depends on what the game demands. The Bosh-Anthony tandem has been invaluable defending the pick-and-roll and shouldn't be discounted. But if the Heat want to turn Game 5 into guerrilla warfare, they might opt for smallball again. That would maximize speed and spacing -- and encourage James to operate closer to the basket. Fans of the Wade-James pick-and-roll are well aware the Heat rarely make that play call when James is at the 3. Any scheme that urges James to be a bully makes the Heat a much tougher team to defend.

Will the Celtics continue to abandon the offensive boards?
The Celtics apparently don’t believe in second chances. Of the 38 available offensive rebounds in Game 4, how many did the Celtics recover on their basket?

Just 3. Their 7.9 percent offensive rebound rate was the team’s lowest in the playoffs and, not coincidentally, it was their worst offensive efficiency of the playoffs as well.

The Celtics are the worst offensive rebounding team in the league for a reason: they’d rather stop transition. Once the shot goes up, almost every Celtics player retreats back on defense to bottle up the Heat’s vaunted transition game. Boston’s defense was terrific in the open court, stopping Wade's and James’ attacks before they even started. But it came with a cost: The Celtics' offense was almost always one-and-done.

There’s a fascinating tradeoff here. Do the Celtics continue to surrender second-chance opportunities or do they crash the boards to rescue a struggling offense? Many decorated coaches (Gregg Popovich and Stan Van Gundy, to name a couple) choose to abandon the offensive rebound game to set up their defenses, but usually it’s because their offenses don’t need second-chance opportunities.

The Celtics, however, need all the help they can get on the offensive end, especially with a wounded Rajon Rondo. Look for the Celtics to get Garnett back on the block, where he was most effective in Game 3, and helping out on the boards. Garnett and Glen Davis didn’t secure an offensive rebound in Game 4, but don’t expect that to happen again.

Is this Shaquille O'Neal's final game?
Lost amid the swirling storylines of the series is the prospect that one of the NBA's most gigantic legends could be suiting up for the last time.

How do we begin to quantify O'Neal's contributions to the game? Let's start with the record book. He has played 50,017 minutes in his NBA career (regular and postseason) -- that's about five weeks' worth. O'Neal is the active leader in points, total rebounds, offensive rebounds, blocks, field goals, field goal percentage, free throw attempts and fouls. He's won an MVP award, four NBA titles (one of them with the Heat and Wade) and was named Finals MVP three times. His career Player Efficiency Rating of 26.43 trails only Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

O'Neal's legacy transcends anything numeric. Heat rookie Dexter Pittman was 4 when O'Neal was drafted in 1992 by the Magic out of LSU. At the time, Orlando was still a fledgling expansion team and when O'Neal was asked how he felt about going to a small market in central Florida, O'Neal responded, "Orlando has Disney. I like Mickey. I'm looking forward to going to Disney and chillin' with Mickey."

Though O'Neal entered the league long before the digital explosion, his charisma and unfiltered relationship with fans made him arguably sports' first and most aggressive social media star. He was the first high-profile NBA player to embrace Twitter and use it to further his already outsized personal brand. O'Neal always understood that character arcs and robust public images are as essential to the game's livelihood as slam dunks and championship banners. The drama surrounding his arrival, tenure and departure with the Lakers will be one of the most enduring chapters of the basketball era.

If the Heat are able to build a big lead Wednesday night and Doc Rivers inserts O'Neal into the game, will the Miami faithful give him a standing ovation? If they have a sense of history and an appreciation for the pageantry of the game, they will.

The first half of LeBron James' masterful 35-point, 14-rebound performance against the Boston Celtics was a demonstration of why LeBron came into the league as the most hyped rookie in NBA history, and how he's been able to dominate so many games throughout his eight seasons in the league.

James used his unprecedented combination of size, speed, strength and court vision to attack the basket with reckless abandon and score at will, overpowering the Celtics over and over again on his way to inside baskets or free throws. James scored 22 points in the first half -- points the Heat desperately needed -- and he made only one jump shot while doing so.

The second half was a different story. The Heat 's offense went stagnant, and LeBron went quiet in the third quarter. The game came down to the wire, the kind of situation that LeBron struggled in all season long, but he was magnificent in the clutch on Monday night, scoring 11 of the Heat's final 13 points in regulation and scoring or assisting on the first two baskets of overtime.

More important, LeBron's late-game heroics weren't just about his overcoming the late-game struggles that have plagued him. They were an exhibition of all the ways he's evolved as a player since coming into the league eight years ago:

2:00 Remaining: The 3-point shot

When LeBron first started gaining national attention as a high-schooler because of his shocking athletic gifts and court sense, the first question people had about him was simple:

Can he shoot the ball?

The answer was that he really couldn't. LeBron's perimeter shot selection was questionable, his form was atrocious, and he had no idea how to use footwork to set up his jumper.

During his Rookie of the Year season, LeBron shot 29 percent from beyond the arc, and his effective field goal percentage on jumpers was just 35.6 percent. To give you some context on just how abysmal that is, Rajon Rondo's effective field goal percentage on jumpers this season was 38.2 percent.

That offseason, LeBron set out to fix his biggest weakness, and the results were immediate. LeBron may have been better served working on his in-between game or his post-up game early, but he has so much strength in his wrists that he can shoot 3s with the same ease that most players shoot 15-footers.

LeBron shot a career-high 35 percent from 3-point range his sophomore year, and while he is no Ray Allen, he has always hit a decent proportion of his 3-pointers since his rookie year, especially considering how many of them he takes off the dribble.

On Monday, with two minutes remaining in the game, the Heat down three, and the Boston faithful smelling blood after two quick Celtic 3s, LeBron stared down Paul Pierce in the corner, rose up for a flat-footed 3 and drained it. If he missed the shot, the series would be tied, and it's not a shot that LeBron could have made his rookie season.

0:48 Remaining: The up-and-under

With the score tied and only a few possessions remaining, LeBron dribbled the ball at the top of the 3-point arc until there were eight seconds remaining on the shot clock, then drove directly into the teeth of a Boston defense that was waiting for him.

It was like watching a clip from a movie we've all seen far too many times, especially this season: On a crucial possession, LeBron decides not to trust his teammates or his jump shot, drives recklessly to the rim, and gets easily turned away by the defense.

LeBron crossed over, drove hard to the right, and found both Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett waiting to swat his shot away with three seconds remaining on the shot clock. This time, however, was different. LeBron gathered the ball, took two big steps, up-faked and got Pierce in the air while keeping his pivot foot down, and softly laid the ball in with his left hand to give the Heat a two-point lead.

While it wasn't a traditional post move, it was exactly the kind of thing that LeBron has been working on with Heat assistant coach David Fizdale:

The eventual next step is a countermove, the drop-step, which James has been seen working on in the weeks before the playoffs.

That "eventual next step" came on Monday night, when the Heat needed LeBron to take it most. LeBron is already better at scoring at the rim than anyone in the league, and now he is learning that footwork and patience can be just as valuable around the rim as size and strength.

Overtime, 4:19 Remaining: The midrange shot

Brace yourself for this next statement:

LeBron James quietly turned himself into one of the best midrange shooters in the NBA this season.

According to NBA.com's StatsCube, LeBron made 45 percent of his midrange jumpers this season, which is an incredibly efficient mark for a high-usage perimeter player. Paul Pierce made 44 percent of his midrange jumpers. Kobe Bryant made 42 percent. Derrick Rose made 40 percent. Dwyane Wade, 40 percent. Kevin Durant, 42 percent. Carmelo Anthony, 42 percent.

Ray Allen shot 46 percent, barely edging out LeBron. Statistically speaking, out of all the high-usage perimeter players in the league, LeBron was the best midrange shooter not named Dirk Nowitzki (Dirk shot 53 percent -- he's a freak).

With the score tied in overtime, LeBron put his improved midrange jumper to work. With the shot clock winding down after the Celtics perfectly defended a Wade-James pick-and-roll, James posted up Paul Pierce 20 feet away from the hoop, took two dribbles and swished a turnaround jumper. The bucket gave the Heat the all-important first basket of the final period.

Overtime, 3:42 Remaining: Working without the ball

In the first half, James and Wade opened up driving lanes for each other by attacking aggressively and put constant pressure on Boston's defense. In the second half, the offense stagnated and devolved into the "taking turns" approach that has been so painful to watch for all those who know what James and Wade can do when they play off of each other. But with a two-point lead and roughly four minutes to play, coach Erik Spoelstra changed all that by calling for the Heat's nuclear option in crunch time -- the Wade-James pick-and-roll.

James got an off-ball screen from Chris Bosh, set a ball screen for Wade, and found himself with space at the free throw line when Delonte West and Paul Pierce went to trap Wade. Wade slithered through the trap and found James, forcing Kevin Garnett to rotate over to James and leave Bosh wide open at the rim; James passed to Bosh for a dunk that put the Heat up for good.

It's been a process for Spoelstra to get LeBron to realize just how unstoppable he can be if he sets screens and makes himself useful when he doesn't have the ball in his hands, but James stepped up at just the right time and did what fans have been begging him to do all season.

James' clutch performance in Game 4 wasn't about his getting through some mental block or finally paying off some kind of karmic debt -- it was the product of the countless hours James has put into honing his skills, both on an individual and team level, since arriving in the NBA.

Overtime, From 3:42 On: Getting Help From Your Friends

As spectacular as James was near the end of Game 4, he wasn't the one to put the nails in Boston's coffin. That happened when Dwyane Wade hit an impossible, flat-footed 23-foot jumper while James stood watching under the basket (Mo Williams isn't doing that any time soon, folks), and then Chris Bosh tipped in a missed LeBron "hero shot" that could have given the Celtics an opportunity to hit a game-tying transition 3.

There's a reason LeBron came to Miami. While LeBron was a good fit with his teammates in Cleveland (and I should mention that Cavaliers big man Anderson Varejao could absolutely have made the same tip-in that Bosh did), it's nice to have teammates who can be relied upon to finish things up after a great performance.

BOSTON -- James Jones may’ve committed the best foul of his career Monday night.

In a play that was easy to overlook in a game loaded with shot-making and missing and plenty of high drama, the Heat forward made a heady play that changed the game’s outcome.

After LeBron James had a costly turnover with a little more than 20 seconds remaining, Celtics’ guard Ray Allen grabbed the loose ball and appeared headed to the other end for a fast-break layup.

The game was tied and baskets were nearly impossible to come by in the grinding half-court slugfest. There was a strong chance that Allen’s potential breakaway would have decided the game. But it didn’t because of Jones and the Heat won 98-90 in overtime to take a 3-1 series lead.

Just after Allen grabbed the ball and was breaking into stride, Jones grabbed him from behind to halt the play. The strategy came in because Jones knew the Heat had a foul to give, meaning the Celtics just took the ball out of bounds and the Heat were able to set their defense.

“You have to know time and score and know the flow of the game,” Jones said. “You can’t give them easy baskets in that time of the game, it’s deadly.”

Jones was notified by Heat assistant coach Ron Rothstein of the foul situation in a timeout a few minutes before. But having that knowledge and making a split-second decision are two different things.

After the foul and a Celtics’ timeout, the Heat were able to get a stop and force overtime when isolation defense on Paul Pierce forced a miss.

“You make plays instinctively, sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re bad,” Jones said. “That one just happened to be a good one for us.”

After tipping in LeBron James’ missed jumper to push Game 4 in Boston out of reach with 24.2 seconds left in overtime, Chris Bosh unleashed a celebratory yell toward the Miami Heat's bench as he ran down the floor.

It was the loudest exhale of his career.

For the entire season, Bosh has absorbed criticism from every direction and the outside noise was getting to him. He admitted as much at the Heat’s practice. The barbs fired at Bosh questioned everything from his game to his toughness.

He’s too soft to hang with the big boys, they say. He can’t play a lick of defense. Kevin Garnett is in his head. He has never won anything of note. He floats on the coattails of LeBron and Dwyane Wade.

But when LeBron’s shot bounced off the rim with less than 30 seconds left and the Heat up only three points, the Heat desperately needed Bosh to come through. And Bosh rose to the occasion, boxing out Ray Allen underneath and getting his left hand on the ball, just before Jeff Green could swoop in for the rebound, to give Miami a five-point lead.

“There has been so much discussion about Chris,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said after a 98-90 win over the Celtics in Game 4. “I continue to remind him [that] he doesn’t have to answer to anyone’s critics [and] expectations.”

By pushing it to a two-possession game with 24 seconds remaining, Bosh closed the door on the Celtics -- and perhaps Boston’s rule over the East.

Bosh’s reaction after the tip-in may have been a little over the top for some. The fist pump may have been a little too dramatic. The scream may have been a few seconds too long.

But this was his moment, and he wanted to extend it as long as possible.

“Honestly, that kind of emotion I think is always needed,” Bosh said. “It’s just how I felt at the time. It’s just so intense just going through that whole time. You’re tired, you’re into it, but it was a one-possession game up to that point and that kind of gave us a little bit of a cushion at the time.”

Bosh wasn’t the only one celebrating. Wade, too, gave a fist-pump of his own after the play.

“He had the biggest rebound of the game with that tip-in,” Wade said after the game.

The putback was just one of Bosh’s 12 rebounds in Game 4, and two of his 20 points on the night. But the biggest takeaway from Bosh’s performance has little to do with his stat line. It was the responsibility that Spoelstra assigned to the 6-foot-10, 230-pound center.

Spoelstra entrusted Bosh to be the Heat’s last line of defense as the team’s center during the most crucial minutes of the season. Such a responsibility would have been unthinkable eight months ago. After all, Bosh was the All-Star anchor on some of the worst defensive teams in recent NBA history during his Toronto tenure.

But Bosh was Miami's sole big man in the game for all but 20 seconds of the fourth quarter and overtime. Over that time, the Celtics mustered just 17 points.

Seventeen points in 20 minutes with Bosh playing center.

“To be successful he has to understand that he can’t just make an impact on the game offensively,” Wade said. “No matter what goes on he must have an impact on the game defensively and rebounding the ball. We said going into the game, and Coach said as well, we need 12 rebounds from Chris, and he got 12 rebounds.”

To hear the Heat laud Bosh’s contributions was a bit stunning considering how terrible Bosh started out Monday’s game. He opened it shooting 1-for-6, the same mark that he recorded in Game 3. After saying on Sunday that nerves got the best of him in Game 3, Bosh appeared to have been swallowed by the moment yet again.

But instead of folding up like a lawn chair as he did the game prior, Bosh clamped down in the second half, gobbling up rebound after rebound on the defensive end while mixing in turnaround fadeaways against Garnett.

When Celtics coach Doc Rivers sent out center Jermaine O’Neal to start the fourth quarter, Spoelstra called on Bosh to play the 5, a position Bosh wasn’t comfortable with earlier in the season. But on Monday, Bosh manned the middle for the rest of the game -- against Garnett, no less.

“He really stood up to the challenge,” Wade said. “That shows a lot of growth from Chris, and he put a little bit more on himself with his comment, and I like to see the way he responded.”

We’ve seen Wade and LeBon rise to the occasion in the postseason before, but Bosh hasn’t had many of those opportunities in his career. After all, this is his first trip past the opening round of the playoffs, and we’re waiting for him to write his own script. In Monday’s Game 4, Bosh left no doubt who was the best big man on the floor.

“You just have to believe in yourself and have confidence because nobody else is gonna give it to you,” Bosh said. “You know, you just have to go take it.”

What kind of game will LeBron James bring?
For a player whose in-game stat line is constantly moving like a stock price, it's often hard to measure exactly what kind of impact James is having on a game. On Saturday night, James' contributions relative to his talent were about as negligible as it gets.

Know how many field goal attempts James had at the rim in Game 3?

Six -- and that includes those that resulted in foul calls and/or occurred in transition. For a Heat team that couldn't buy a shot from long distance, that's not going to cut it.

Defensively, the Celtics don't make it easy for either James or Dwyane Wade. In its half-court defense, Boston will almost always bring another help defender to the action before James can even reach the outskirts of the lane. And, in fact, half of those attempts at the rim developed because James cut to the basket without the ball.

In Game 4, LeBron will have to deploy every ounce of his basketball creativity against Boston's defense. It's always possible he can drain seven or eight long jumpers off the dribble and bludgeon the Celtics from the outside, but that won't force the Celtics to modify their defense, which should be LeBron's goal.

That's ultimately how a superstar "controls" the game -- by making an opponent question its entire defensive approach and ultimately adjust it. When James went off for 35 points in Game 2, he tormented the Celtics as a cutter, a weakside threat and an attacker off the pass. In fact, James drained only 4 of 11 shots from 16 feet and beyond that night, but was the Heat's catalyst.

James needs to use his presence to stretch out the Celtics' defense, and the best way to do that is stay on the move, work off the ball as both a screener and cutter, and attack the instant he catches the pass (rather than backing up for a dreaded step-back jumper).

Will the Heat take advantage of Boston’s banged-up point guard position?
If Rajon Rondo plays, it will be with one arm. If Delonte West plays, it will be with a gimpy and tender shoulder. If Carlos Arroyo plays, it will be a sign that the Celtics are on life support.

Even though Boston stayed afloat while the medical staff treated (read: gruesomely snapped bones back into place) Rondo’s left elbow, the Celtics need Rondo out there to conduct the offense. He’s an escape artist in transition, pushes the right buttons and finds shooters where they want the ball. According to ESPN Stats & Info, the Celtics have shot 54.5 percent from downtown with Rondo on the court in the playoffs and just 28 percent when he sits on the bench. When Rondo’s defender stays two arm lengths away, Rondo can send any pass without interruption.

In Game 3, the Heat did a poor job of forcing Rondo to his left post-injury, but don’t expect that to happen again in Game 4. With a dead arm like that, the Heat would benefit from scrapping the hands-off approach to defending Rondo. Instead, look for them to stay on his right hip and force him to use his damaged goods.

Keep an eye on how the Heat set screens on and off the ball. If Rondo plays, he won’t be able to bump the Heat’s big men as easily when they come off of Bibby’s pindowns, nor will he be able to fight through picks as well as he’s used to. The Heat will have to be careful not to cross the line with physicality, but expect them to make Rondo work for everything.

Will the Heat’s rotation change after Erik Spoelstra’s re-evaluation?
If Spoelstra does tweak the starting lineup, he probably won’t announce it until the very last moment. When he removed Erick Dampier as a starter, it was without warning even at the pregame presser.

It is safe to say that Zydrunas Ilgauskas, with his sloppy and defenseless play in the playoffs, has a weak grasp on the starting gig -- no doubt made weaker by Joel Anthony’s suffocating defense and growth on offense. Should Spoelstra flip that switch, it would allow him to insert a big body like Ilgauskas or Dampier off the bench to play against Shaq, rather than watch Anthony try to front Shaq in the post. With 100 pounds between them, it’s a matchup Spoelstra should try to avoid.

Elsewhere, Rondo’s injury could warrant a change at the point guard position as well. Mario Chalmers can hound the ball far more effectively than Bibby, and would apply more pressure on the battered Rondo. However, it’s doubtful that Spoelstra would demote the veteran point guard in favor of a combo guard who has been a ticking time bomb with the ball this season. But defensively, it makes more sense than ever.

Spoelstra has allocated the appropriate number of minutes to Anthony and Chalmers, but the timing of those minutes has been off. Does the coach want Bibby or Chalmers to pressure a damaged Rondo? Does the coach want Anthony or Ilgauskas to anchor the paint against Boston’s most potent attack? We’ll find out the answers to those questions in a critical Game 4.

Can the Heat regain their defensive intensity?
How bad was the Heat's defensive performance in Game 3? Only seven times all season did Miami surrender more points per possession than it gave up on Saturday night in Boston.

You have to hand it to the Heat -- they were equal-opportunity pushovers. They got torched from behind the line (9-for-18 for Boston) because they over-helped on penetration. The Celtics generated 21 points in transition after combining for only 22 points on the break over the first two games in Miami. And the Heat lost the battle inside, allowing Kevin Garnett to score every which way.

What was the problem in Game 3? The Heat simply didn't anticipate sharply enough. Possession after possession, they were caught off-guard by simple actions from the Celtics. Whether it was a down screen from Jermaine O'Neal to free up Pierce or Garnett, or a misdirection cut by Ray Allen, the Heat were a step slow or completely caught by surprise. They often played as if they'd never watched a second of Boston Celtics film.

Doc Rivers often says that the Celtics aren't a one-on-one team, and he's correct. Boston manufactures buckets waiting for you to overcommit or lose focus. The Heat's instincts were razor sharp at AmericanAirlines Arena, sniffing out everything the Celtics threw at them in the half court. To win Game 4, Miami will have to reapply itself.

How will the Heat respond to the emotional pitch of the series?
When Rajon Rondo dislocated his elbow in Game 3, the intensity of this matchup was heightened to where most thought it would reside from the opening tip of Game 1. Garnett was said to have been furious and Rondo's valiant return in the second half stirred the Garden faithful into a frenzy.

Rondo's presence in the second half carried great symbolic importance, but Garnett's awakening on the offensive end of the floor might have been the more tangible contribution -- and one just as emotionally vital to the Celtics' success in Game 3. Garnett's ferocity stood in stark contrast to Bosh's reticence. The Heat power forward confessed Sunday that he had some jitters, which might explain his subpar play.

Seven-game series allow for dramatic -- and instantaneous -- turns of events. You get a sneaking suspicion that something in Game 4 might spark the kind of explosion the Rondo incident had in Game 3. Will the Celtics physically retaliate on Wade in some form or fashion? Will Garnett do something Garnettian? Will James reclaim his aggressiveness, then taunt the TD Garden crowd as he did in Portland in January? Will Bosh have an opportunity to perform his rare primal scream?

If and when something unexpected (or expected) happens, how will the Heat react? Will they use that emotion as a springboard or will it consume them?

• Just when you think Joel Anthony has reached his peak offensively, he goes out and makes as many buckets as LeBron James (six). Sure, that also speaks to how off LeBron was in Boston, but Anthony was -- gasp -- smooth in the paint and continued to show confidence in his abilities.
  
  If you’ve been regularly attending the Heat’s practice, you can’t help but notice the work that Anthony has been putting into his offensive game. Every time you walk onto the gym floor, there’s Anthony working with Heat assistant coach Keith Askins on the most elementary post moves in the paint. Catch, turn, shoot. Catch, turn, shoot. Catch, turn, shoot.
  
  The hard work is paying off. On Saturday, Anthony connected on six of his seven shots from the floor and recorded the first playoff double-double of his career. The Celtics were floating off of Anthony all game, an approach that many teams have employed against the Heat's offense. The strategy usually leads to 4-on-5 basketball if Anthony turns down shots and awkwardly passes out of wide-open opportunities like he did in November.
  
  There was a play early in the second quarter that illustrated Anthony’s growth this season. Mario Chalmers penetrated into the paint and Anthony’s defender, Shaquille O’Neal, rotated to shield Chalmers’ from entering any further, leaving Anthony wide open on the baseline. Chalmers dished the ball to Anthony and, instead of hesitating, Anthony immediately flew toward the rim and threw down a dunk with two hands.
  
  If you watch that clip next to his Twitter-trending-blooper back in November, it’s like looking at a before-and-after photo. His aggressiveness is essential to keeping the opposing defense honest.
• Consider this: Outside of James Jones and Mario Chalmers, Miami is shooting 21-for-86 (24 percent) from beyond the arc here in the playoffs. And they’ve still won six of their eight games. The Heat are getting nothing from Mike Miller and Mike Bibby in the 3-point category and they’ve been able to sustain their cold shooting for the most part. As was the case in the regular season, the outcome of a Heat-Celtics game primarily hinged on the downtown game. In Game 3, the Celtics shot 9-for-18 (50 percent) while the Heat shot 5-for-23 (22 percent). And the Celtics won convincingly.
• After Celtics coach Doc Rivers let it be known that he was going to play Shaq in Saturday’s game, it was a little stunning to see former Heat starter Erick Dampier dressed in a suit on the Heat bench. If Dampier isn’t worth activating in Game 3, when will he ever be? Squeezing Dampier out of the rotation against the 76ers made sense given that Philly could run circles around him. That was Spoelstra’s rationalization for deactivating him in the opening round. But the size of Boston’s O’Neal duo seemed to be a perfect opportunity to get Dampier some run. He did an admirable job on keeping Dwight Howard out of the paint earlier this season and seemed primed to be the Heat’s answer for Boston’s size up front.But, alas, Dampier was in a suit on Saturday. This is a former starter for the Heat, a guy who regularly played 20 minutes a game before Miami suddenly cut out the floor beneath him. No, Dampier won’t decide this series either way, but it’s odd to see Jamaal Magloire active and Dampier, someone the Heat trusted with the startging gig for 21 straight games, inactive.
• How good is LeBron? On Saturday, he scored 15 points, blocked five shots, recovered seven rebounds, dished out four assists and grabbed two steals. And it may have been one of the worst playoff games of his career.

Kevin Garnett looked gassed during the two games in Miami. He offered his teammates his typically reliable screens. But when the action was on the other side of the floor, Garnett spent much his time at 19 feet, hanging out on the perimeter waiting for the rock to find him for a face-up jumper. In the two games, he scored 22 points on 11-for-29 shooting, without a trip to the stripe.

Garnett is a player fueled by emotion as much as precision. While the latter was disrupted by an active defensive performance by the Heat's big men and helpers, the lack of gusto seemed uncharacteristic from a player driven by intensity.

On Saturday night in Boston, Garnett returned with a vengeance. He led all scorers with 28 points, draining 13 of 20 shot attempts from the field and doing it in a variety of ways.

Asked to assess the power forward who tormented his front line in Game 3, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra found an apt comparison.

"Kareem Abdul-Jabbar," Spoelstra said. "That’s what it reminds me of, he’s too proud of a player, talk about an MVP, one of the best players in this league, as soon as he stepped on the court as a rookie 14 years ago. For the revisionist out there, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when everyone threw dirt on him in the Final against Boston, he came out the next night and had 37 and 15. And while all this fuel was going on the last three days, I was cringing because you know this is a proud group, and you knew they would have a response which is fine."

Garnett brandished Jabaar-like authority in Game 3, and those 13 field goals can be classified in a few different groupings:

Pindown Pinball
(first quarter, 10:35)
The Heat have been trapping ball handlers aggressively since the outset of the postseason and have been successful doing so, but Garnett compromised that strategy in a number of ways on Saturday.

On the first of these two possessions -- less than two minutes into the game -- the Celtics are in motion and move the ball around the floor. When the ball ends up in the hands of Jermaine O'Neal at the top of the floor, Garnett sets a firm down screen at the right elbow for Paul Pierce, who makes a "zipper cut" from the right block up to the perimeter.

LeBron James is a big, strong dude, but he can't get around Garnett's screen. Chris Bosh wisely switches out on Pierce, but rather than stick on Garnett, LeBron decides to pursue Pierce once he fights through Garnett. By that time, KG is rolling hard to the rim. Pierce finds him there. Neither the slow-footed Mike Bibby nor Zydrunas Ilgauskas can make the rotation. Easy slam for Mr. Garnett.

(third quarter, 5:24)
The Celtics have a side-outta-bounds play, but the set has a nearly identical result with a nearly identical error by the Heat. After Pierce inbounds the ball from the right sideline, he reclaims it from O'Neal at the top of the floor. Garnett is right there to pin down LeBron, as the two-time MVP tries to fight through KG to follow Pierce from right to left along the arc.

Again, Bosh makes the right play, but again LeBron fights through the screen rather than hold back and pick up Garnett. This leaves KG wide open from 20 feet. Pierce makes the easy pass, and Garnett sinks the easy jumper.

Poor Joel Anthony
(third quarter, 7:32), (third quarter, 3:24), (third quarter, 2:47)

On a career night for Anthony, it pains us to have to highlight the only failures in his game. But in a span of five minutes, Garnett devours Anthony off the dribble three times.

There's very little variance to these three possessions. Three times, Garnett fights for and establishes position on the left block against the smaller Anthony. On the first, Garnett drives middle, then flicks in a hook shot.

On the second, Anthony is anticipating another drive to the middle and plays Garnett's left shoulder. Like any crafty vet, Garnett opts baseline. With a wicked spin move, Garnett again finishes with the right-handed hook shot.

Drive No. 3: Anthony is trying like hell to deny the entry pass from Allen in the left corner, but Allen finds the perfect angle for a bounce pass to KG, who is quite deep. A little shake, then a spin, then the hook from Garnett. Anthony doesn't have a prayer.

Thank you, Jermaine O'Neal!
(second quarter, 4:09)
Garnett hangs out deep on the left wing, practically in the corner, with O'Neal in front of him on the left block. Meanwhile, Delonte West holds the ball in the right corner, miles from Garnett. As a result, the Heat bigs have drifted toward the strong side of the floor.

The ball reverses to Rajon Rondo at the top of the floor, who doesn't hesitate darting a pass to Garnett. With the Heat's bigs cheating, O'Neal pins down not one, but both Heat big men -- Bosh and Anthony.

This leaves Garnett wide open for a baseline 18-footer. String music.

(third quarter, 11:55)
Coming out of the locker room following intermission, the wily Celtics run a stellar misdirection play. On the left side of the floor, Rondo fakes a handoff to Pierce, who's moving right to left along the arc. This prompts the Heat, again, to cheat toward the ball side of the floor.

Then, it's deja vu all over again. O'Neal pins down both Heat big men -- this time it's Bosh and Ilgauskas. Garnett fades to 20 feet, where he receives the pass from Rondo and drains the open jumper.

Exploiting the mismatch
(second quarter, 8:57)
The Celtics execute another smart side-outta-bounds play. Allen inbounds from the right sideline to Rondo at the top of the floor. Garnett darts immediately from the right side directly at Rondo's defender, Mario Chalmers. With Rondo dribbling right, Chalmers is stuck with Garnett as KG slips the screen and dives hard to the hoop.

Rondo lobs a pass over Chalmers' head that finds Garnett directly beneath the rim. James Jones rotates nicely, but Garnett takes a couple of dribbles backwards and launches a fadeaway jumper over his shorter defenders from about 9 feet.

(fourth quarter, 4:59)
The game is well in hand at this point. Garnett sets up on the right block, but moves across the floor to set a screen for West. Initially, he posts up Anthony, but then hands the ball off to West.

Then, KG and West go dancing. As West retraces his path, dribbling uphill, Garnett posts Wade, who had been guarding West.

Similar to the possession in the second quarter, Garnett seals off Wade. West lobs the pass over Wade, and Garnett finishes at close range with a bank-shot layup.

The rest
(first quarter, 6:34)
Garnett picks up a potpourri of other buckets.

Bosh defends him well in the first quarter on the right block. Garnett tries to drive baseline, but there's nowhere to go against Bosh, so KG spins middle. Bosh stays with him, but Garnett elevates and hits the contested jumper. Sound defense, tough shot -- but it's Garnett's night.

(second quarter, 3:35)
Dislocated elbow and all, Rondo finishes with 11 assists, and this one results from his dribble penetration. Rondo turns the corner courtesy of a screen from Pierce. As he does, the Heat's defense -- including Anthony -- collapses on the speedy guard. This leaves Garnett wide, wide open from 20 feet. Rondo pitches the ball to Garnett, who nails the jumper.

(third quarter, 11:19)
Off a Bosh miss, the Celtics are off to the races on the break. Big men are taught to run directly to the rim in transition and Garnett, with approximately 73 years of experience as a big man, does just that. He beats both Bosh (who is still on the floor after tumbling) and Ilgauskas down the court (go figure), seals off the Heat's starting center and awaits the pass from Rondo. Another easy 2.

Exactly one year before Game 3 of the Celtics-Heat series, LeBron James dropped 38 points against Boston in a 124-95 Cavaliers blowout. Over the next three games, James shot a combined 18-for-53 from the field, the Cavaliers lost all three games, and James ended up leaving Cleveland for Miami.

On Saturday night, James had a performance that was eerily similar to his last three games in a Cavaliers uniform. James hit two of his first three jump shots, but failed to make an attempt from outside the paint in the final three quarters of Miami's 97-81 loss.

He wasn't able to find lanes to the basket, and most of his forced drives ended in offensive fouls or desperate floaters that had little hope of finding the net. His passing lanes were cut off, and he finished with as many turnovers as assists. The effort was there for James, and he finished with five blocks along with two steals, but it wasn't enough.

On offense, LeBron is not simply a shooter, a slasher, a scorer or a passer. He is a controller. When he's on his game, LeBron is always a step ahead. When the defense loads up for a drive, he raises up and hits a jump shot. When they leave a lane open, he explodes through it for a basket or a foul. When he forces more than one set of eyeballs to fixate on him, he finds a teammate for an easy look.

The best version of LeBron does not play within the flow of the offense. He creates the flow of the offense.

That version of LeBron James was not in the TD Garden on Saturday. Just like the Pistons did in 2006, the Spurs did in 2007, and the Celtics themselves did in 2008 and 2010, Boston's defense was able to take the flow of the game away from LeBron, forcing him to react to their defensive rotations and pressure rather than control the game as he saw fit.

When the Celtics' defense put LeBron into a reactive mode, the two-time league MVP had few answers. He lost confidence in his improved midrange jumper. Save for one nice pass to a cutting Wade after a UCLA cut that put LeBron on the block, his post game was nowhere to be found. The synergy he showed with Wade in Games 1 and 2 was a distant memory.

Some of the blame for LeBron's performance can be put on his teammates -- the shooters didn't do a great job of spacing the floor, Bosh wasn't there to help LeBron in pick-and-roll situations, and while Wade was unquestionably the best Heat player on the floor, most of his offense came in isolation.

Still, the fact of the matter is that James is too good and too accomplished to need his teammates to free him up. He is a two-time MVP, one of the best players in the game, and he needs to find a way to make his game work when a defense like Boston's steps up its intensity and takes his bread and butter away from him.

LeBron has a new supporting cast capable of doing things his teammates in Cleveland could only dream of doing. He's slowly but surely added to his bag of tricks since his arrival in Miami. He has the tools, both on his team and in his own game, to prevent being overwhelmed the way he was on Saturday. There are no excuses for LeBron's Game 3 performance, and he knows that.

The playoffs will be easier for him in Miami than they were in Cleveland because of the way Wade and Bosh can pick up the slack for him, but the onus is still on LeBron to lead (or co-lead) his team to victory. His new teammates and new skills will only help him if he's willing to use them. If he falls back into old habits and defaults to trying to overpower a defense too good to be overpowered, he could end up tasting some very familiar playoff disappointment.

The Heat’s starting lineup finally dug a hole the team couldn’t climb out of. For the sixth straight game, the starting unit of Mike Bibby and Zydrunas Ilgauskas next to the Big Three was outscored by the opponent, this time by a whopping 19 points in just 10 minutes of action.

Nineteen points in 10 minutes. That drops the unit's playoff plus-minus to an NBA-low minus-69, meaning the starting lineup has been outscored by 69 points while on the floor.

When asked about the starting five after Saturday’s loss, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, “We’ll evaluate everything, A to Z.”

As in, Anthony to Zydrunas.

Spoelstra has been loyal to his starting lineup to the point of stubbornness. Entering the game, Spoelstra has noted that the Heat were 6-1 in the playoffs with the current starting lineup. The Heat have been able to successfully stop the bleeding in the postseason because of outstanding production from the reserve unit. The team has become dependent on heroic efforts, but Saturday, even a career-night from Joel Anthony, who recorded a double-double for just the second time in his career, couldn’t rescue them. Even 17 points and three steals from Mario Chalmers off the bench couldn’t save them.

The Celtics came out firing, and by the time Ilgauskas left the game with 6:33 remaining in the first quarter, the Heat were already down 16-7. The 7-foot-3 center was benched for the rest of the first half, a pattern here in the playoffs. When Ilgauskas started the second half, the Heat watched their two-point lead turn into an eight-point deficit within four minutes.

The shooting proficiencies of Bibby and Ilgauskas -- which have been completely absent in the playoffs – were supposed to space the floor and open up the driving lanes for the Heat’s Big Three to penetrate and go to work. But that hasn’t been the case. In fact, it’s been quite the opposite. Bibby has shot 7-for-28 (25 percent) from beyond the arc in the playoffs, while Ilgauskas has shot 3-for-8 on long 2s. Combined, the two are a horrific 12-for-48 (25 percent) beyond 15 feet in the playoffs.

When Bibby and Ilgauskas aren’t hitting their shots, they serve very little purpose on the offensive end because they can't, at this stage in their careers, create their own shots. The inaccuracies are particularly damaging because Ilgauskas and Bibby are toxic as defenders on the other end of the floor. Yes, the Heat understood they’d have to hide the two veterans on defense, but the truth is that the offense has been just as disastrous.

So what can the Heat do about it?

Plugging Anthony into the starting five would be a good first step. We’ve written about this topic ad nauseum, but it’s worth repeating again: The Heat are a machine when Anthony complements the Big Three. Handcuffing Bibby to Anthony offers the Heat the best of both worlds: a shooter and a defender. Amazingly, the backup center was plus-5 in a game in which the Heat lost by 16 points -- meaning the Heat outscored the Celtics by five points with Anthony out there.

The Heat have been giving Anthony starter's minutes every game, so the issue isn’t playing time. It’s a matter of timing.

Simply put, when the Celtics have sent out their best five, the Heat have not sent out their best five. And on Saturday, it caught up to them.

After Friday’s practice in Miami, Spoelstra indicated that he was reluctant to tinker with the starting unit because of the potential butterfly effect on the rest of the rotation. If he starts Anthony, he cannot play him 48 minutes, no matter how tireless he seems. If Anthony were to receive 10 minutes of rest, Spoelstra would have to decide who to play at the 5 against Boston’s second unit.

Would Spoelstra assign Ilgauskas on Glen Davis? A better question would be whether he plays Ilgauskas at all, now that Nenad Krstic has been displaced from the Boston rotation. If Rivers continues to work Shaquille O’Neal into the rotation, that may present an opportunity to give Ilgauskas some minutes to run pick-and-pops with LeBron James and make Shaq work away from the rim. But Erick Dampier, a larger body to push Shaq out of the paint, may be the stronger battery off the bench in that situation. Whatever the case is, the Heat can hide Ilgauskas or Dampier during 10 minutes against the Celtics' second unit rather than against Boston's best.

Ultimately, the reality is that the Heat are not 6-2 in the playoffs because of the starting lineup. They are 6-2 in the playoffs despite the starting lineup.

Can Miami's pick-and-roll defense keep it up?
The present-day Boston Celtics certainly didn't invent the rotating pick-and-roll scheme, but on a good night, it often appeared as if they'd perfected it. With their skilled personnel, the Celtics utilized endless combinations of ball handlers and screeners. In the event the defense sniffed out that first action, the ball moved quickly to the weak side where another pick-and-roll materialized.

The Heat have neutralized all that by doubling down on the aggressive pick-and-roll defense that stifled Philadelphia. Barely a minute into Game 2, the Heat strangled Ray Allen on the sideline after the sharpshooter got a screen from Kevin Garnett.

When Paul Pierce and Garnett teamed up on the pick-and-roll, the Heat reacted instantaneously: A LeBron James-Chris Bosh trap, with Joel Anthony rotating onto Garnett before Pierce's pass out of the double-team even found Garnett.

How about Rondo as the ball handler on a screen-and-roll? Bosh simply dropped back a step to the foul line, wide base, arms up. More times than not, these options resulted in a spot-up jumper for Jermaine O'Neal, Glen Davis or a contested look for Garnett.

When the Celtics have had trouble in the past establishing their pick-and-roll game, Allen has served as a lifeboat. But to compound Boston's troubles, the Heat are owning the passing lanes between the action and Allen (and other safety valves), denying the kickouts that have made Allen so lethal for so long.

James and Dwyane Wade deserve a ton of praise for their alchemy on the offensive end, but make no mistake: The Heat are winning this series on the strength of their pick-and-roll coverage, especially the work being performed by Bosh, Anthony and James, and the speed and anticipation of the wings behind them.

What will we see from Shaq?
Shaq is expected to be back in Game 3. If you judge by the sentiment at Friday’s practice, the Heat players didn’t lose any sleep over it last night.

Although LeBron and Wade both downplayed his return, Shaq’s activation means that we could see less of Anthony and more of Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Erick Dampier as the series progresses. Shaq has abused Anthony -- who weighs probably 100 pounds less than the Celtics' big man -- this season in the 15 minutes that they shared the court together. The scoreboard during those 15 minutes: Boston 33, Miami 16.

If Shaq enters the game, you can expect two things. One, the Celtics will want the game’s tempo to come to a screeching halt. And two, the Heat will try to get Shaq defending the pick-and-roll. The Heat know that Shaq will be rusty in this game, and he won’t have the agility to defend on the move. This is when Ilgauskas can come in handy, because the best way to neutralize Shaq’s defensive presence is to pull him out on the perimeter. Pick-and-pops are effective decongestants.

There’s no telling how many minutes we’ll see from Shaq on Saturday, but expect the Heat to try to throw a big body on him and keep him out of the basket area. With no jumper or dribbling skills, the only way Shaq can score is if he plants himself in the restricted area and calls for the ball. Dampier is the Heat’s largest player and may be activated for Shaq duty.

Can Bosh keep Garnett from turning back the clock?
If anyone could use four days off, it is Garnett. During the second half of Game 2, he was visibly gassed, lumbering up and down the floor and barely getting off the ground when he needed to. In the first two games of the series, Garnett has essentially been reduced to a jump-shooter, shying away from the paint with every passing minute.

But we may see a well-rested and motivated Garnett on Saturday. And Bosh will have to be prepared, especially given that the Celtics will be energized on their home floor. The Celtics have made it a priority to feed Garnett in the post in the early going to warm him up against Bosh, and we’ll probably see it again on Saturday. It’s a stark contrast to the end-game strategy for the Celtics, as Garnett rarely got the ball as a first option in the closing minutes.

With Garnett showing his age, it becomes even more imperative for Bosh to roll to the rim after pick-and-rolls. Bosh's aggressiveness on Saturday will be essential to the Heat’s success, but even more so because of the environment. If Bosh refrains from putting the ball on the deck in isolation situations or resists diving to the rim, then the Heat’s offense suffers tremendously. For his first road playoff game after the first round, getting him in a score-first mentality from the opening tip will be key.

Bosh has been excellent defensively in this series, but it’s also true that Garnett won’t continue missing those 15-footers consistently. If Garnett catches fire, Bosh can’t let it get to his head. The Heat need him to be mentally prepared more than ever.

Will James and Wade continue to pressure the Celtics' defense?
Game 1 gave us a little pause. Sure, it was an impressive win for the Heat against the reigning conference champions, but when the buzzer sounded, there was a lot of fool's gold scattered across the floor at AmericanAirlines Arena -- contested jumpers from the Heat's superstars that happened to fall through the net.

The Heat responded in Game 2 by better exploiting the Celtics' strong-side pressure. James worked tirelessly off the ball on the weak side looking for creases. He scored on cuts and spot-ups against a Boston defense that was tilted toward the ball. Sure, James did much of his damage in isolations -- but more times than not he was the last Heater to touch the ball on the possession, not the first.

For instance, there was a clever side-out-bounds play toward the end of the first half -- a dribble-handoff between Wade and Bosh. When Wade shot off that handoff and was met with a wall of green jerseys, he reversed the ball, where it ultimately worked its way over to James. LeBron's drive, seal and score against Pierce will be classified as an "isolation" by those charting the game, but this wasn't your traditional LeBron-and-four-guys-watching set. It was heady basketball that leveraged the Celtics' strategy to create a quality opportunity to score.

The Celtics will be energized on Saturday night and will rebuild that wall around the lane they've spent years constructing. James and Wade will have plenty of looks from 19 feet if they so choose. Will they?

Can the Heat win in the Commonwealth?
Over the past few days, Erik Spoelstra has been insistent: By winning the first two games of the series, the Heat held serve in Miami -- and nothing more. The Heat have unquestionably established some confidence against the Celtics, but everyone from Spoelstra to Wade is still speaking in deferential terms.

"[The Celtics] have been through this before, where everybody is throwing dirt on them ... that it's near the end of the line, that their guys have too many miles on those wheels," Spoelstra said at Heat practice on Friday. "We don't believe any of that, because every time you count them out they come back with a championship response."

The Heat have lost 10 straight games in Boston -- though the only two that are relevant are the pair of games this current unit dropped earlier this season. The Garden floor is where the first real inkling of doubts about the Heat's fortitude were laid on opening night, then reaffirmed when they blew a lead to the Celtics in mid-February. And this Heat team still hasn't won there.

If the Heat succumb to the crowd on Saturday, tighten up on offense, lose that defensive focus that's carried them to three consecutive wins against Boston over the past month, the momentum will shift back into the Celtics' corner. The Heat say they don't listen to outside noise -- and that might be true -- but an inability to win in Boston isn't about conventional wisdom.

It's about self-confidence, something every title contender must have in large quantities.