The Heat made history in Game 2 on Wednesday night, erupting for a postseason franchise record 23 3-point makes in a 111-101 upset win over the Celtics to even the series at 1-1. The bombardment came from a diverse cast for the undermanned Heat with six different players knocking down multiple 3s as the team shot a scorching-hot 53.5 percent from 3-point range.

The move to fire away from deep should not come as a surprising choice. Without Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier, Miami lacks reliable creators and attackers at the rim outside of Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro. The team was going to need to roll the dice from beyond the arc to give themselves a chance. Their hot start put added pressure on a Celtics offense that struggled to keep pace and got little help all night beyond their two All-Stars.

Yet the assessment of Miami’s steellar shooting after the game led to a bizarre evaluation by Mazzulla of his team’s role defensively in the outburst.

“Defensively, obviously they made a conscious effort with free reign to shoot more,” Mazzulla said. “I thought most of those were moderately to heavily contested, so we’re going to have to make the adjustment on some of those.”

That assessment stood in contrast to a couple of Celtics players after the defeat as Jaylen Brown and Jrue Holiday acknowledged the Celtics were willing to let most Heat shooters fire away.

“They were making shots, guys that we want shooting the ball were hitting them,” Brown said. “Seemingly couldn’t get them to miss. Credit to those guys.”

Holiday was more candid about Boston’s tactics right out of the gate.

“I think just starting off, the guys that we wanted to shoot, not that we let them, but it wasn’t like a get out to them and put it on the ground,” Holiday said. It was kind of like protect the basket but still get a close-out, but they started knocking them in. We know Martin can shoot, but they had guys out there that were knocking in everything, even Jaime Jaquez just knocking it in.”

Miami’s hot shooting night should have had a familiar feel for the Celtics as Game 2 proved to be the fourth time in the last two postseasons that the Heat shot 50 percent or better from 3-point range.

A video review of Miami’s made 3s indicates that Mazzulla’s assertions are dubious. There were maybe 10 total contests of those 23 3-point field goals by the Heat and that’s having a generous threshold for what this author considers to be a contested shot. Boston moderately or heavily contested perhaps a handful of those makes. The rest? The Celtics were inviting wide-open looks. A few came on defensive breakdowns via rotations (another area Boston had to clean up) but the Celtics gameplan here was clear and failed.

Mazzulla’s late-game tactics were also questionable. The team threw an extra body at the Herro/Adebayo pick-and-roll and left wide-open hot shooters (Haywood Highsmith, Caleb Martin) with the game on the line with ugly results. Closing the game out with Kristaps Porzingis (-32) over Al Horford (+8) invites debate as well since Horford was the superior defender on this night.

Ultimately, there is nothing here that the Celtics can’t clean up going into Game 3. Yet, Mazzulla’s gameplan opened the door for the Heat to fully lean into their high 3-point shooting volume. Miami’s drivers shouldn’t share the Celtics more than their ability to hit the 3-ball in this series. While Jaquez and Martin shot over their heads in Game 2, they did so on wide-open looks. Meanwhile, Boston did a horrific job respecting a host of 40 percent 3-point shooters (Herro, Highsmith, Jovic) and was punished accordingly.

The pressure is on Mazzulla and the Celtics to respond on this front in Game 3 to retake command.

“I think we’ve gotta be more creative,” Tatum said. “The playoffs are about making adjustments game to game, and they did that…They’re supposed to try to mess things a little up, and make it a little bit tougher. So it’s our job to react in real time, as well as make our adjustments going from game to game.”