The Miami Heat brutally ended the Celtics’ season of living dangerously
As it turns out, there’s a simple reason that no NBA team has ever won a series after falling behind 0-3: the better-prepared unit is typically the one in front. So it went in the Eastern Conference finals where, after losing their last three games, the Miami Heat regrouped for Game 7 and blew out the Boston Celtics 103-84 on the road on Monday night. After fighting so hard to stay alive, the Celtics were finally burned by the return of the same bad habits that put them on the brink of elimination in the first place.
“The hole we put ourselves in, it’s hard,” Celtics guard Malcolm Brogdon said after the game. “No one’s climbed out of that hole. It was the same tonight. We couldn’t climb out of the hole we created.”
Before breaking down what went wrong for Boston, let’s pay tribute to the Heat’s Caleb Martin, who was unfairly robbed of his rightful Eastern Conference finals MVP award by a single vote. Make no mistake, Jimmy Butler is a worthy winner if he’s being rewarded for his entire body of work this postseason. Playoff Jimmy remains the main reason that a No 8 seed has reached the NBA finals for just the second-time ever (the 1999 New York Knicks also accomplished the feat, losing 4-1 to the San Antonio Spurs).
However, Butler’s mid-series struggles were a major reason why the Celtics were able to claw their way back and force a Game 7. In contrast, whenever Miami needed a big basket against Boston, Martin was there. In Game 7, Martin scored 26 points on 16 shots without the benefit of a free throw, all while collecting 10 rebounds. By the end of the series, Martin had increased his points total to 132, a record for an undrafted player in a Conference final.
Yes, like six other players on this Heat roster, Martin was undrafted. After playing for the University of Nevada, Martin was signed as a free agent by the Charlotte Hornets, who eventually waived him. The Heat signed him to a two-way contract in 2021, meaning he split time between the NBA and the G League. Even if Martin had not earned MVP honors thanks to his play alone, he deserved it simply for being the perfect embodiment of a team wildly outperforming expectations.
After upsetting the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs, the Heat have continued to play the role of the underdogs. This will be the case once again when the NBA finals begin on Thursday, especially considering how dominant the now well-rested Denver Nuggets have looked in the Western Conference playoffs.
But recent history suggests that if the Nuggets don’t respect the Heat, Miami will hurt them. The Celtics did not respect the Heat, or at least not enough to avoid losing the first three games of the Conference finals in the first place. Had they played up to the expectations from the start, it’s likely they wouldn’t have had to look for inspiration from the 2004 Boston Red Sox in MLB and become the first team in their league to pull off an unprecedented comeback.
Maybe it was those memories that made a Boston win seem nearly inevitable heading into Game 7. Following Derrick White’s miracle buzzer-beater in Game 6, momentum favored the Celtics. Game 7 would be at home in TD Garden, making them heavy favorites. Some opponents, having failed to put away a dangerous team, would have wilted under that kind of pressure. The Heat, to their credit, refused to play into the narrative being written around them.
