Bruce Brown scored a season-high 30 points to help lead the Indiana Pacers to a 144-129 win over the host Miami Heat on Saturday.
Obi Toppin scored 22 points for the Pacers, who split their two games in Miami after losing to the Heat on Thursday. Aaron Nesmith and T.J. McConnell tallied 20 points apiece, Myles Turner added 17 and Bennedict Mathurin had 16.
Brown was 11-for-16 from the field, including 4 of 6 on 3-pointers.
Jimmy Butler led Miami with 33 points on 12-for-23 shooting from the field. Caleb Martin poured in 18 points, Duncan Robinson scored 17, and Josh Richardson and Orlando Robinson each scored 16.
Indiana, the league’s highest-scoring team, continued its offensive dominance, connecting on 56 of its 85 (65.9 percent) field-goal attempts and 16 of 32 on 3-pointers.
Brown’s triple with 8:37 remaining pushed the Indiana lead to 115-103. Miami made a run that cut the lead to six with 4:54 left on a Butler jump shot, but that was the closest they would get.
The largest lead of the game for the Pacers was 17, when Brown made a 3-pointer with 1:10 left to cement the Indiana victory.
Indiana held an early 5-4 advantage, which lasted just 16 seconds, for the only Pacers’ lead of the first half.
A 40-point second quarter helped Indiana tie the score at 65 at halftime. Nesmith and Mathurin paced the Indiana first-half scoring, with 13 points apiece. Duncan Robinson led the Heat with 15 first-half points and Richardson added 14.
Indiana was without its leading scorer, Tyrese Haliburton, who was scratched with a knee injury. Haliburton, who is averaging 27 points per game, poured in 44 points in the Pacers’ loss to the Heat on Thursday.
Miami’s second-leading scorer and top rebounder, Bam Adebayo, was sidelined with a hip injury, which he suffered against the Pacers on Thursday.
–Field Level Media
