Celts rally from 22-point deficit to edge Heat, 98-96

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BOSTON (AP) — Jaylen Brown had 29 points portion Payton Pritchard scored 24 points to assistance the Boston Celtics marque their biggest comeback of the season, rallying from a 22-point shortage to decision the Miami Heat 98-96 connected Friday night.

Derrick White deed a 3-pointer from the country with 1:31 remaining that provided the Celtics — winners of 5 consecutive — the last margin. White changeable 6 of 20 but ended up with 21 points.

Nikola Vucevic had a double-double successful his archetypal crippled with the Celtics, finishing with 11 points and 12 rebounds. Boston made 9 of its last 15 shots from 3 aft missing 20 of 21 from heavy to commencement the game.

Miami had a accidental to triumph it successful regulation, but Davion Mitchell missed a 3-pointer from the country with 2.7 seconds remaining. Andrew Wiggins led the Heat with 26 points portion All-Star Norman Powell had 24 points.

Miami wasted small clip serving announcement that it would beryllium a agelong archetypal fractional for Boston. The Heat jumped retired to a 15-2 pb and led by arsenic galore 22 points earlier pulling into halftime up 59-38. The Celtics changeable conscionable 28% during the archetypal 2 quarters, but things changed successful the 3rd quarter.

Up 67-49, Miami watched arsenic Boston outscored the visitors 25-7 implicit the last 7:06 of the 3rd quarter. White and Pritchard started the comeback with back-to-back 3-pointers, past Pritchard deed a 3 coming retired of a timeout that chopped Miami’s pb to 67-58.

White gave Boston its archetypal pb of the crippled erstwhile helium knocked down 2 escaped throws that snapped a 72-all people with 9.1 seconds near successful the third, but Powell’s layup astatine the buzzer knotted it astatine 74-74 heading into the fourth.

Acquired astatine the commercialized deadline, Vucevic received a bully manus from the TD Garden assemblage erstwhile the seasoned guardant checked successful astatine 8:58 of the archetypal quarter. The 35-year-old was serenaded with chants of “Voooch!” aft finishing wrong for a brace of hoops arsenic portion of the Celtics’ third-quarter surge.

Boston has present won each 3 meetings against Miami.