Heat to Face Nuggets in NBA Finals after defeating Celtics in Game 7
The Miami Heat stunned the Boston Celtics in Monday night’s Eastern Conference Finals, posting a rollercoaster, hold your breath, best-of-seven series in Game 7, 103-84, to extend their remarkable postseason run.
The Heat, whose resurgence as No. 8 in the East has seemingly surprised everyone but them, will take on the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals starting Thursday. The Nuggets secured their first trip to the championship round by defeating the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals a week ago. The Heat is only the second eighth seed, after the 1998–99 Knicks, to reach the NBA Finals under the current playoff format.
Not that it was easy. After the Heat won the first three games of the series, the Celtics regained their rhythm and won the next three to force a seventh and deciding game at home. Boston made a bid to become the first team to win an NBA playoff series after trailing 3-0. But Miami avoided a historic footnote/punchline by diving into its bottomless well of perseverance.
Even as the Heat struggled in the regular season, losing almost as often as they won, their longtime coach, Erik Spoelstra, stuck to his approach.
Spoelstra said he felt the Heat could improve if they continued to focus on their day-to-day work. There was nothing particularly sexy about it – meeting after frustrating losses, watching a movie, practicing hard.
“Those are satisfying experiences,” said Spoelstra earlier in the series, “especially when you lose matches and get criticized for that. But you’re still able to just get together and try to do well.
The Heat went about six months without doing well. But in the past six weeks, they’ve already unlocked their promise and potential to make another NBA Finals appearance. It is the seventh in the franchise’s 35 seasons and the second in the past four years.
“The ups and downs prepared us for these moments,” Bam Adebayo, the Heat’s All-Star center, said during the series as the Heat worked to outlast the Celtics.
The Heat won the first two games of the series in Boston, then defeated the Celtics in Miami in Game 3. Spoelstra said “a lot of pent up stuff” had fueled his team, but refused to elaborate.
His players were more forthright: they remembered being eliminated by the Celtics in the conference finals last season, a particularly disappointing exit as the Heat were the top seed in the East and the series lasted seven games.
The heat almost ruined it this time. Before Game 7, the Celtics dreamed of emulating the dramatic comeback of the Boston Red Sox in the 2004 American League Championship Series when they made baseball history by coming back from a 3–0 series deficit to eliminate the Yankees. The Red Sox then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series to win their first championship since 1918.
But Miami was too determined and too tough and found beauty in battle. Jimmy Butler, the team’s gifted two-way forward, imposed his will early in the series, while Adebayo was a defensive threat. But their supporting cast made all the difference.
Caleb Martin, a small forward who entered the starting lineup for Games 6 and 7, was the Heat’s most consistent player throughout the series. Gabe Vincent, the team’s starting point guard, played the last two games with a sprained ankle. And Duncan Robinson came off the bench to make three-pointers in time.
On Monday, in front of a hostile crowd feverish during player introductions, the Heat appeared intent on drowning out the noise by relying on their defense. The Celtics missed all 10 of their 3-point attempts in the first quarter; in the second quarter, the Heat led by a whopping 17 points.
Boston had cut Miami’s lead as Martin returned to work and finished the third quarter with a turnaround baseline jumper. He opened the fourth quarter with his fourth 3-pointer of the game and the Heat’s lead was back to 13.
Adebayo had been asked earlier in the series about the key to the team’s success.
“Believe,” he said. “Believe in each other. Believe we can win. Believe that we can beat the number 1 team in the league. You know, faith is real, and we have the will to win.”
The Heat did indeed beat the No. 1 team, upsetting the Milwaukee Bucks, who had the league’s best regular season record, in the first round of the playoffs. They defeated the fifth-seeded Knicks in six games in the second round to set up their series with Boston.
The Celtics thought they were on another deep playoff run after losing to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals last season. But obstacles – both predictable and unforeseen – got in the way of them even before they met for the preseason.
Topping the list was the sudden absence of Ime Udoka, who made his mark on the defense as first-year head coach of the Celtics last season. But in September, less than a week before training camp, the Celtics suspended him for the season for “team policy violations.” Two people who were informed about the case and not authorized to speak about it publicly said that Udoka was in a relationship with a female subordinate.
The whole situation cast an unwelcome shadow on the Celtics as they tried to focus on the season ahead. “It’s been hell,” Marcus Smart, the team’s starting point guard and last season’s defensive player of the year, said at the time.
Rather than move outside the organization to hire an experienced coach as Udoka’s replacement, the team prioritized continuity by temporarily promoting Joe Mazzulla, who had been an assistant on Udoka’s staff.
Mazzulla, 34, whose only previous experience was as a head coach at Fairmont State, a Division II program in West Virginia, had suddenly been put in charge of an NBA team with championship hopes. It was a gamble that seemed to pay off by the All-Star break, when Boston had the best record in the league. The Celtics named Mazzulla their permanent head coach in February and officially cut ties with Udoka, who was hired by the Houston Rockets last month as head coach.
But Boston slumped in the final weeks of the regular season, falling to No. 2 in the East behind Milwaukee and needing six games to knock out the Atlanta Hawks in the first round. (The series ran so unexpectedly long that Janet Jackson had to postpone a concert in Atlanta. Jayson Tatum from Boston publicly apologized to her.)
The pressure only mounted on Mazzulla—and on the team’s two stars, Tatum and Jaylen Brown—during the Celtics conference semifinal matchup with the Philadelphia 76ers. Tatum and Brown were inconsistent as the series stretched to seven games. Mazzulla came under scrutiny for some of his lineup choices and for his apparent aversion to calling timeouts in critical situations.
“Joe is learning, just like all of us,” said Smart during the series. “I know he’s been killed many times, rightfully so.”
But after Tatum scored 51 points in a decisive tour de force against the 76ers, the Celtics came up against the Heat, a savvy and experienced opponent with vengeance in mind.
The Heat has come a long, hard way to reach the conference finals. They had to beat the Chicago Bulls in a play-in game to slip into the postseason. They then lost two rotational players, Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo, to injuries in their first round match with the Bucks.
But the Heat wasn’t about to give up against the Celtics — not after a season of growth under Spoelstra, not as Butler filled his more unsung teammates with confidence, and not against an opponent who had buried Miami’s championship dream a year ago .
“We go out and we hoop and we play basketball the right way,” Butler said, “knowing that we always have a chance.”