Miami defeats Celtics for 2-0 series lead

Associated Press

MIAMI

LeBron James walked toward Mario Chalmers in the final minute with a content look.

He punched his teammate twice in the chest. Fitting, because James and the Miami Heat have now landed two blows against the Boston Celtics.

James scored 24 of his 35 points in the second half, Dwyane Wade added 28 and the Heat used a late 14-0 run to pull away and beat the Celtics 102-91 in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series on Tuesday night.

“Now the mental discipline begins,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “This thing is just getting started.”

Chris Bosh finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds for Miami, which leads the best-of-seven 2-0.

Boston tied the game at 80 on a pair of free throws by Paul Pierce with 7:10 left. The Celtics missed their next six shots and Miami pulled away, taking command of both the game and the series — which doesn’t resume in Boston until Saturday night.

“That’s our staple. We know the only way for us to win games, especially in the playoffs, is to play defense,” James said. “Everyone has each other’s back. If one guy gets beat, another steps up. They made a run, a heck of a run ... but we just kept grinding, kept playing our principles, and we finally wore them down.”

Rajon Rondo played through a balky back to score 20 points and add 12 assists for Boston, which got 16 points from Kevin Garnett and 13 from Pierce. The Celtics have only rallied from an 0-2 deficit in a best-of-seven series once.

Jeff Green scored 11 and Delonte West added 10 for the Celtics, who got only seven from Ray Allen on 2 for 7 shooting.

“Nothing we can do about it,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said. “We’ve got a third game and we’ve got to take care of that. Whatever the past is, it is. They’ve won two games at home. But we can’t allow them to play like this, or it’s going to be tough at our place.”

To win this series, Boston will need to prevail four times in a five-game span — which it did in the first round against Miami last year, then again in the second round at the expense of James and the Cavaliers in the East semis.