How Celtics’ adjustments solved the Tyler Herro-Bam Adebayo duo: Film breakdown

MIAMI — Tyler Herro is going to make you work. With Jimmy Butler out, the Heat guard has stepped up into the primary creator role for Miami and has been running Boston’s defense in circles all series.

He had just about the best performance of his career in the Heat’s Game 2 win, putting the challenge on the Celtics to make a statement in Game 3. This was the moment for Jrue Holiday to show why the Celtics brought him in.

Holiday has been instrumental in shaping and directing the defense with his versatility and great reads, but they sometimes need him to step in and take the opponent’s best player out of the series.

Herro shot 5 of 16 from the floor in Game 3, which is already something for the Celtics defense to hang its hat on. But the real victory was holding him to two assists and four turnovers in Boston’s 104-84 win.

It traces back to Holiday’s commitment to disrupting Herro’s rhythm and steering the Heat guard where the Celtics want him. He didn’t want to chase Herro in circles all night, so he had to prevent Herro from getting a head start.

“I don’t really like chasing people,” Holiday said. “I don’t like them scoring, so however you take that, whatever that means, I don’t like getting scored on. So, getting through screens or cutting them off one-on-one or whatever that might be, I don’t like getting scored on.”

Holiday was trying to get between Herro and the ball as much as possible. You could see it on this play when Bam Adebayo set his handoff closer to the 3-point line. Miami does this to get Herro deep into the lane more quickly and potentially open up a pass to Adebayo on the roll, but Holiday steers Herro into help as Jayson Tatum does a good job helping off Caleb Martin in the corner. Herro then leaves his feet and throws it away.

“I think we were connected as a team defensively,” Holiday said. “And that’s something we’ve got to continue to do, especially against a team on any given night that anybody can go off.”

A big part of that was Tatum getting more involved on Herro. The Celtics wing often spends most of the game as a helper on defense, protecting the rim when Kristaps Porziņģis is up on the ball or handling the weakside shooters.

Miami struggled to get Herro’s man picked off by Adebayo’s screens, so the Heat tried running a surprise stagger screen a minute later. The action is designed to get Holiday chasing Herro uphill and give Herro the separation he needs to hit the lane with space. But Tatum caught them by surprise and switched on to Herro to shut the whole play down.

When Miami invited the Tatum switch onto Herro a minute later, Tatum once again was able to chase over the Adebayo screen smoothly. Tatum is the ideal guy to switch onto Herro because he is so tall. Herro doesn’t want to take a pull-up shot with Tatum behind him.

Sure enough, Tatum forced Herro to rush into a drive straight at Porziņģis without any passing option. It would have been an easy stop…