James and Wade score 63 as Heat top Celtics 102-91

Exactly 365 days after losing Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals at home — his former home in Cleveland, anyway — against Boston, James was on the cusp of losing the upper hand to the Celtics again.

Not this time.

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 aching Celtics 102-91 in Game 2 of their Eastern Conference semifinal series on Tuesday night.

"Feel good about it," James said. "Series is far — far, far, far — away from over. It's really just beginning for us."

James shot 14 of 25 from the field, and logged 44 minutes with no turnovers. Chris Bosh finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds for Miami, which leads the best-of-seven 2-0.

Game 3 in Boston isn't until Saturday night, and the Celtics may be particularly thankful for the break.

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 Paul Pierce — who retreated to the locker room for treatment on his strained left Achilles' in the first half. Ray Allen was held to seven points, and left with what he said was a bruised chest cavity courtesy of an elbow from James in the third quarter.

"Being down 2-0 doesn't scare any of us, doesn't make us nervous," Allen said. "It's just an opportunity to come out shining."

Boston tied the game at 80 on a pair of free throws by 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.

And for James, it was delicious irony.

May 1, 2010: Cleveland opened the East semis at home with a win over Boston.

May 1, 2011: Miami opened the East semis at home with a win over Boston.

May 3, 2010: Cleveland loses Game 2, the first stumble on the way to falling in the series.

May 3, 2011: James gets what might go down as a breakthrough win — for him and the Heat — over Boston.

"We finally wore them down," James said.

Jeff Green scored 11 and Delonte West added 10 for the Celtics.

Even for a franchise with such fabled history as the Celtics, an 0-2 deficit represents a colossal challenge.

This is now the ninth time Boston has dropped the first two games in a best-of-seven series. In the previous eight, the Celtics prevailed only against the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1969 NBA finals.

And it's something this group of Celtics has never faced before, either.

The last time Boston lost the first two games of a playoff matchup was in 2004, when it was swept by Indiana. The current core of Celtics had lost Game 1s four other times before this series, then bounced back to win Game 2 each time, against Chicago and Orlando in 2009, then Cleveland and the Lakers in 2010.

"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. So it can be done, but neither James (7-0) nor Wade (5-0) has ever been part of a playoff series defeat after their clubs won the first two games.

"This is a great team we are going against right now," James said. "We're just trying to give ourselves a good chance to win, just try to keep on attacking them, playing as hard as we can defensively, just trying to wear them down throughout the game, but it's a great team."

That's one of the titles the Heat are trying to claim, too.

James won the MVP award in 2009 and 2010, his reign officially ending a couple hours before Tuesday's game when the NBA made the long-expected announcement that Chicago's Derrick Rose was this season's top player.

James' name did not appear on nine of the 121 ballots cast. Wade was entirely left off all but 10 of the ballots; voters were asked to rank the league's best five players.

They noticed.

"At the end of the day, we don't really play this game for individual awards," Wade said. "He has two MVP trophies, which is awesome. I have a finals MVP trophy. Our body of work speaks for itself. What we've done in this game speaks for itself."

James scored 12 points in the third quarter, one more than he managed in the first half, to help Miami take a 72-67 cushion into the final 12 minutes. James then added the first basket of the fourth, but Boston answered with a 13-6 run over the next 4 minutes to knot the game at 80.

The outcome was undecided — momentarily.

That's when Miami's big run began, including a three-point play where James dunked and got fouled after Joel Anthony kept an offensive rebound alive. Mario Chalmers started it all with a 3-pointer — his only points of the night — off a pass from Wade, and Miami was on its way.

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

NOTES: All-Star guard Chris Paul sat near the Heat bench, with longtime James confidant Maverick Carter. ... Shaquille O'Neal (calf) was out again for Boston, while the Heat said Udonis Haslem (foot) still "isn't ready" to return from November foot surgery. ... Pierce played 33 minutes, giving him 4,259 in his Celtics playoff career, passing Dennis Johnson (4,258) for seventh in franchise history. ... Heat guard Mike Bibby's steal with 41 seconds left in the first quarter was his 100th in 87 playoff games.

Gasol plays through criticisms, helps the Lakers take 2-1 lead

NEW ORLEANS—For much of the Lakers’ 100-86 Game 3 win in the opening-round series against the Hornets here, we seemed destined for another round of what’s-wrong-with-Pau-Gasol stories. He was just 2-for-4 in the first half, with four points and four rebounds, looking like the spectator-ish Gasol that got through the first two games of this series with just 16 total points, 11 rebounds and 21.1 percent shooting.

But at the end of the third quarter, Gasol got mad. He’d been hit with a traveling violation with 42.8 seconds to go in the third, a call that he could only shake his head over. The next time down, he thought he had an easy two points over Hornets big man D.J. Mbenga, but the play was waved off, the refs having called a foul on Willie Green before the shot. Gasol disagreed.

  He roared his frustration, his neck stretched, his mouth clenched, his tendons visible. He stepped to the free-throw line, made the sign of the cross—he probably need a little absolution after the foul words that flashed across his head in the wake of the call—and made both free throws.

“Just trying to explode a little bit and get myself going, be a little more aggressive out there, more explosive out there, get my body to explode,” Gasol explained. “That’s kind of what I tried to do on that play. I didn’t think I got fouled on that first play, I guess they called it. Then I exploded and finished well even though it didn’t count. I continued to play and got myself going out there.”

Did he ever. Too long playing the powerless forward in this series, Gasol started the fourth quarter by sinking a—believe it—3-pointer that bounced a five-point Laker lead back to eight at 10:52. He was posted up on the left block on the Lakers’ next possession and found Steve Blake for an open 3-pointer that pushed the lead to 10. He had a shot blocked by the Hornets’ Emeka Okafor, but grabbed the rebound and followed with a layup. He then nailed a 13-foot jumper from the left post at 8:36, and in just a little more than two minutes, Gasol almost singlehandedly pushed that five-point lead into a 14-point edge that the Hornets had no chance of cutting into.

Gasol’s final line: 17 points on 7-for-13 shooting, 10 rebounds and four assists. Not exactly a soft set of numbers—and not exactly a surprise to his teammates.

“He is going to continue to play,” forward Lamar Odom said. “He is tough. He doesn’t get enough credit for that, how strong he is mentally, the way he just keeps playing, keeps playing, keeps playing. He is going to get his shots.”

Of course, Gasol doesn’t always get his shots. There are nights—and there were plenty this season—in which he takes too few attempts, in which he is too satisfied to be a facilitator rather than an in-the-paint force. What’s odd about Gasol’s case, though, is that it only takes a bad game or two for folks in Lakerland and all over the league to start questioning his intestinal fortitude. The “soft” label gets thrown around in Gasol’s vicinity more often than anywhere outside a Charmin factory, which is pretty remarkable considering the guy has won two championships with L.A. and has had a stellar international career as the leader of the Spanish national team, one of the three most successful teams of this generation.

“You have to understand how much basketball he has played,” Odom said. “Since he came here, the Finals, the World Championship, the Olympics, the Finals, the Finals. He hasn’t had too many bad games in between those. So, an off night, so what?”

At this point, there has been so much discussion about Gasol and his supposed softness that he is able to tune it out. What he cares about, he says, is taking a bad game and getting better the next time out. He was better in Game 2 than in Game 1. He was even better in Game 3. Naturally, he’s expecting good things in Game 4.

“I don’t think I have to prove anything, really,” Gasol said. “I think people know the kind of player that I am and what I’ve done. You can have a couple of tough games, bottom line, if the team wins that is ultimately what is important. I was upset the first game, my performance, didn’t contribute enough to have a chance to win that game. Second game, I think it was better even though I struggled shooting, but I was more aggressive and made plays in different aspects. Today, better game. Sunday, I hope I will continue this line, this ascending line.”