Hyde: It’s Dragic’s turn to star as Heat go up 2-0 on Celtics | Commentary

Explain it? There’s no way to explain it other than to say it was Goran Dragic’s turn in the fourth quarter this time.

All this magical run, the storyline is there is no single storyline. If it’s not Jimmy Butler scoring 40 points, if it’s not Tyler Herro not playing like a rookie, if it’s not Bam Adebayo blocking a shot for the ages, Thursday had Dragic making all the shots he’s been making in the first half now in the final minutes of their 106-101 win against Boston in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals..

It started with a 95-95 game when Dragic drove into Boston’s Kemba Walker with the kind of coin-flip call — charge or block? — that went his way. He made two free throws to put the Heat up, 97-95. Then he made a 3-pointer as the shot clock ran down. Five-point lead.

With 57.1 seconds left, his jumper made it 104-98 and, well, now you could see the unlikeliest of finish lines from there. Now Dragic, who finished with a game-high 25 points, pumped his fists after that final jumper.

This doesn’t feel like it’ll be a seven-game series. More like a 27-game series. Each game has four or five mini-games stuck inside it.

Look at Thursday. Boston dominated the first half and stretched its lead to 17 points in the third quarter. The Heat then outscored Boston 37-17 by that time that third quarter finished.

In Boston, they spent the hours since Game 1 talking about there was too much isolation-style dribbling at the end of that loss and wondering if Gordon Hayward would return from a nasty ankle injury. Or when he would.

Now they have a few other things to consider. What happened to them in that third quarter? How did they forget how to play pick-and-roll defense? Why did Adebayo go off?

“We stopped playing on both ends,” Boston coach Brad Stevens said on ESPN before the fourth quarter.

The seven third-quarter turnovers?

“We didn’t cut at all, we didn’t pass at all, we didn’t play at all,” he said.

The Heat, meanwhile, will spend the hours until Saturday night playing the Guard-Against-Human-Nature game. A 2-0 lead is a nice lead. You can see the end from there, if you care to look. But the idea is not to look. Not now. Not yet.

Even at the end Thursday, the story was of surprise. After the Heat led by seven points at the end of that staggering third quarter, Boston went on a 15-2 run to lead by five. You see what’s at work here? Everything’s at work. Everyone’s in play. Anything happen no matter the score, the moment or your gut saying the night’s over with.

These bubble playoffs are fraught with lessons. Denver has twice come back from 3-1 series deficits to advance. You think you’ll hear about that from the Heat coming up?

The staggering stat is the Heat are 10-1 in the playoffs. Think about that. They had a nice, 44-win season. They’ve turned it on in a manner few teams have done in NBA history.

It has been so revealing, so telling, you keep telling yourself this can’t go on. It was like Boston shooting 58.1 percent in the first half Thursday. That couldn’t go on, right? And it didn’t. There was the mathematician’s regression to the mean. And the man.

Can the Heat keep this streak going?

What makes it more staggering is there’s no Alpha Star on this team. Not like LeBron. Or, um … well, this is the playoffs where the Alpha Stars have gone down. Three of the four teams left show that much: Denver, Boston and the Heat.

Dragic isn’t a mega-star. He just keeps hitting big shot after big shot these playoffs. It was his turn in Thursday’s fourth quarter. The team with a new hero every night had Dragic this night.

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