With no Playoff Jimmy, Adebayo and Herro at center of Heat’s plan vs. Celtics: ‘We go as they go’

This chapter of Miami Heat basketball might always be known as the era of Playoff Jimmy. But with Jimmy Butler sidelined because of a sprained MCL in his right knee to start this year’s playoffs, the Heat is left with a massive void this postseason.

Enter the Heat’s duo of Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro.

“This is our opportunity,” Adebayo said last week a few days after Butler hurt his knee. “We’ve always had little stints of this. But this is our opportunity right now.”

The Heat can’t replace Playoff Jimmy, but Adebayo and Herro are taking on even more of the offensive load in his absence in hopes of extending the team’s season long enough for Butler to potentially return from injury.

While Adebayo, Herro and the Heat faces an uphill battle as the eighth seed against the top-seeded Boston Celtics in the first round of the playoffs, the best-of-7 series moves to Miami for Games 3 and 4 tied 1-1 after the Heat stole home-court advantage and the momentum with a shocking 111-101 win over the Celtics on Wednesday at TD Garden. The combination of Adebayo and Herro was the driving force behind that victory.

“Just like Jimmy, those are two other heads of the snake,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said ahead of Game 3 on Saturday at Kaseya Center (6 p.m., Bally Sports Sun and TNT). “Everything runs through those guys. So as many times as we can put those guys in position to make the right decisions, we’re trusting that and we believe in that and coaches believe in that. As you can see, the majority of the time, they’re winning plays and winning decisions. So we go as they go.”

Adebayo, 26, finished the Heat’s Game 2 win with 21 points on 9-of-13 shooting from the field and 3-of-6 shooting from the foul line, 10 rebounds and two assists while spending a chunk of the game as the primary defender on Celtics All-Star forward Jayson Tatum.

With the Celtics refusing to send much help on Adebayo’s post-ups, he took advantage of those 1-on-1 matchups to score eight important points for the Heat on 4-of-5 shooting from the field in Wednesday’s fourth quarter. All four of Adebayo’s fourth-quarter makes were tough non-rim twos.

“He had big responsibilities defensively,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Adebayo’s Game 2 performance. “Then on the road, yes, it was really important that we had a place where we could just throw the ball and just kind of get settled, especially when they would go on runs or the crowd would get in it and he produced. He was great when we needed to get it settled and he went right to his spot and was able to get some relief points for us.”

Herro, 24, closed Game 2 with 24 points on 7-of-13 shooting from the field and 6-of-11 shooting on threes, five rebounds and a career-high 14 assists to serve as the catalyst behind the Heat’s efficient offensive performance against one of the NBA’s top defenses. He assisted on 10 of the Heat’s 23 made threes (a new franchise record for the most made threes in a playoff game) in the road victory.

Herro also posted the second-best playoff game score (a formula that produces a rough measure of a player’s productivity for a single game) in his NBA career in the Heat’s Game 2 win in Boston. The only better playoff game score that he’s recorded came when he totaled 37 points on 21 field-goal attempts in the Heat’s Game 4 win over the Celtics in the 2020 Eastern Conference finals in the Disney bubble on Sept. 23, 2020.

“We need his aggressiveness, we need his scoring, we need his shooting, we need his playmaking,” Spoelstra said of Herro after his dynamic Game 2 display. “Depending on the possession, it can be any one of those things. But he was good on both ends of the court. He was very good defensively, he was competing on that end, a lot of winning things. I didn’t even see the stat line, I don’t know how many rebounds he had but he was in there. And then based on how we look right now, he’s going to be involved one way or another and sometimes that’s going to be making the right play over and over and over if that’s the right read. He did that [in Game 2].”

With Butler and Terry Rozier (neck spasms) unavailable for the Heat to begin the playoffs, Adebayo and Herro have been at the center of the Heat’s offensive game plan and the focus of the Celtics’ defensive game plan this series.

The Heat won Game 2 because Adebayo and Herro won that battle, producing an excellent 1.75 points per possession (including assist opportunities) on 17 direct screens through their pick-and-roll attack on Wednesday, according to Second Spectrum.

The Celtics consistently sent extra defenders at the Adebayo-Herro pick-and-roll, working to cut off Adebayo’s rolls to the basket and Herro’s drives off Adebayo’s screens. That extra attention allowed the Heat to generate many of the quality three-point looks that led to its historic Game 2 shooting display from behind the arc.

In the end, the Heat outscored the Celtics by 23 points in the 38 minutes that Adebayo and Herro played together during its 10-point Game 2 win.

“It’s not rocket science that they’re going to be heavily involved in our offense,” Spoelstra said of Adebayo and Herro. “The Celtics know that, we know that. There’s going to have to be different layers to it. You can’t just do the same thing predictably. They’ll scheme that. But they’ve had a lot of collaborations over the last several years. It’s all those moments and different things that they’ve experienced together that have allowed us to be able to go to that package.”

The Heat needs Adebayo and Herro to keep making the right decisions while working their two-man game to continue making this a competitive series and potentially pull off the big first-round upset.

Adebayo and Herro know they need each other to have a chance.

“I feel like we complement each other,” Adebayo said.