"Great win," Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. "Obviously, that's not the way we wanted to finish the game. Hectic, ugly basketball the last five minutes. But we'll take the win."
After opening the season 8-0, the Celtics finished November with a 13-2 record and became the 10th team in franchise history to have two or fewer losses in the month. Boston also improved to 4-0 in the second of back-to-back games and 3-0 in home-road back-to-backs.
Paul Pierce scored a game-high 27 points, while Kevin Garnett added 23 points and nine rebounds. James Posey, who played for the Heat the previous two seasons, had 6 points and five rebounds off the bench in his return.
The Celtics' key players didn't have to play big minutes Thursday night as they hammered the visiting Knicks, 104-59. While that helped make playing on back-to-back nights easier, traveling here was still tough as the Celtics didn't get to their hotel rooms until after 4 a.m. The Heat (4-11) had not played since Tuesday.
Despite the imperfect conditions, Pierce was ready to go.
"I feel pretty fresh today," he said before the game. "I didn't have to grind it out yesterday."
Pierce definitely looked fresh in the first half. In 15 minutes, he scored 18 points on 5-of-7 shooting, nailing all three 3-pointers and all five free throws. The Celtics held a 59-41 lead at the half after making eight 3-pointers and causing Miami to turn the ball over 11 times.
"We wanted to make sure we got off to a good start," Pierce said. "If you look at the last couple of road games we had, teams have been jumping on us. We wanted to come off with a better start than we've had. So we did that."
Said Rivers, "It's funny, at halftime we talked about [boxer] Meldrick Taylor, the fight years ago with [Julio Cesar] Chavez and he started dancing in the 12th round and got knocked out. We almost did that. We let our guard down."
The Celtics opened the third quarter with a 12-5 run, with Pierce and Garnett splitting the points, and took a 71-46 lead on a Pierce trey at 8:49. Boston went up, 83-55, on two free throws by Pierce with 1:08 left in the third and finished the quarter leading, 83-61.
