MIAMI — Bam Adebayo scored 23 points, Jimmy Butler had 22 points and 12 assists, and the Miami Heat beat the Philadelphia 76ers 119-103 on Wednesday night for a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

Victor Oladipo scored 19 points on his 30th birthday and Tyler Herro added 18 for the Heat, the East’s No. 1 seed. Oladipo had 10 of those points in the fourth quarter.

Tyrese Maxey scored 34 points for Philadelphia, which got 21 from Tobias Harris and 20 from James Harden.

A 10-0 run in the fourth turned an eight-point Miami lead into an 18-point edge, sealing the win and ensuring the Heat would hold home court before the series shifts north. Game 3 is Friday in Philadelphia.

And now, the Heat will hope history holds – and the 76ers will hope it doesn’t.

Miami has taken a 2-0 lead in 18 previous series, including the first round this season against Atlanta, and won the matchup every time. The 76ers’ franchise has dropped the first two games of a matchup on 19 other occasions, never recovering to win the series.

The question going into Friday will revolve around whether Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid could be ready for Game 3. The league’s scoring champion and MVP finalist has, not surprisingly, been big-time missed by the 76ers.

“We don’t have a big man right now,” Philadelphia Coach Doc Rivers lamented.

Adebayo surely isn’t complaining. He was 8 for 10 from the field and 8 for 8 from the line in Game 1; he followed that up with a 7-for-11 night from the floor on Wednesday.

It wasn’t just the absence of Embiid, though, that hurt Philadelphia. The 76ers were awful again from 3-point range, shooting 8 for 30.

NOTES

WARRIORS-GRIZZLIES: Golden State Coach Steve Kerr accused Grizzlies forward Dillon Brooks of breaking “the code” after he injured Gary Payton II by attacking him from behind as the Warriors guard attempted a layup Wednesday night during Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals.

Payton suffered a fracture to his left elbow and is scheduled to undergo an MRI Thursday to determine the severity of the injury, the Warriors said after the Grizzlies beat them 106-101 in what was the most intense and physical battles of the postseason so far.

Early into the first quarter, Brooks wound up and hit Payton in the head as the guard soared through the air. The contact caused Payton to crash onto his left (shooting) arm.

As Payton laid on the court in severe pain, the Warriors were fuming and demanded the officials take another look at the play. Stephen Curry went over to check on Payton.

“GP’s tough so when you see him in pain like that, you know that it’s not something light,” Curry said after the game. “So it’s a tough situation.”

Brooks ultimately was assessed a Flagrant 2 foul and ejected. Payton split a pair of free throws before exiting the game with 9:08 left in the opening quarter and heading to the locker room. He underwent an X-ray, which confirmed the fracture, and never returned.

Kerr wasn’t sure if it was intentional, but said he thought it was a dirty play.

“Playoff basketball is supposed to be physical. Everybody’s going to compete, everybody’s going to fight for everything. But there’s a code in this league, code that players follow where you never put a guy’s season/career in jeopardy, like taking somebody out in mid-air and clubbing them across the head and ultimately fracturing Gary’s elbow,” Kerr said.

Curry called Brooks’ foul “out of line,” noting that Payton was “defenseless” as he went up for a layup.

“Everything bad that could’ve happened in that situation did,” Curry said. It “knocked him out for the game. We’ll see what happens with his injury. Obviously, tough way to start the game.

“Talk about Flagrant 2s, it was definitely one of those, so (the referees) made the right call there. But I feel bad for GP — like, this is his time to shine in a series like this and a play like that knocks him out, it’s tough.”

Kerr also expressed sympathy for Payton, who has been clawing for an opportunity to play basketball his entire adult life.

The 29-year-old guard played at a community college before getting a shot at Oregon State. Then, he went undrafted and bounced around the NBA and the G League for the last five years mostly as a fringe player, signing 10-day and two-way contracts. Before this season, he never played 30 NBA games in a season.

Payton had gone from being the last man on the Warriors’ roster at the beginning of the season to being a starter in the postseason. But most of Game 2 and perhaps the rest of the postseason was robbed from Payton after Brooks attacked him from behind as he went up for a layup.

“This is a guy who’s been toiling for the last six years, trying to make it in this league, finally found a home, just playing his butt off this year. In the playoffs, this should be the time of his life,” Kerr said. “And a guy comes in, whacks him across the head in mid-air. He broke the code, Dillon Brooks broke the code. That’s how I see it.”

NETS: Ben Simmons will have surgery to alleviate pain in his back caused by a herniated disk, the Brooklyn Nets said.

The procedure will be done Thursday. The Nets said it was decided upon after consultation with multiple back specialists.

Simmons sat out this entire season. The No. 1 pick in the 2016 draft didn’t play in Philadelphia after requesting a trade, citing mental health concerns. After he was dealt to Brooklyn in February in a deal for James Harden, he was bothered by the back while trying to rebuild his conditioning.

The Nets originally said he had back spasms but later said the problem was a herniated disk. Simmons eventually resumed workouts and hoped to make his debut during the playoffs, but that plan was scrapped when he experienced more pain.

Simmons will have a microdiscectomy, in which a small fragment of the disk is removed.