Doubters, Jimmy Butler fueled Heat to Game 6 upset win in Boston. A look ahead to Game 7
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Miami Heat forces Game 7
The Heat pulled off a Game 6 win over the Celtics on Friday, behind Jimmy Butler’s brilliance and some motivation drawn from Draymond Green’s comments. The team will now play its biggest game of the season Sunday when it hosts the Boston Celtics for a decisive Game 7 in the NBA Conference Finals.
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Doubters, Jimmy Butler fueled Heat to Game 6 upset win in Boston. A look ahead to Game 7
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Despite being just one win away from reaching the NBA Finals for the second time in three seasons, the Miami Heat is still being overlooked.
The latest addition to the list of Heat doubters is Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green, who proclaimed, “We’re going to play Boston. That’s who we’re going to play,” during an appearance on TNT’s Inside the NBA after his team eliminated the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday night to reach the NBA Finals.
The problem is the Heat was still one of the Warriors’ two potential Finals opponents when Green made those comments and still is after coming away with a stunning 111-103 win over the Boston Celtics in an elimination game on Friday night at TD Garden to save its season and force a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference finals series. The Heat will host Game 7 on Sunday (8:30 p.m. on ESPN) at FTX Arena, with a trip to the NBA Finals on the line.
“It’s funny. We laughed,” Heat forward P.J. Tucker said following Friday’s Game 6 win when asked about Green’s comments. “I thought it was funny because he knows better than anybody we still got to play the game. Got to play. There’s no guarantees of anybody winning in this league on a night-in and night-out basis. ... It’s kind of weird to be a player and pick another team.”
Green wasn’t alone in doubting whether the Heat could win Game 6.
The Heat entered Friday’s elimination game as nine-point underdogs against a Celtics team that was looking to clinch its first trip to the NBA Finals since 2010 in front of an energized TD Garden crowd.
But the Heat pulled off the upset behind an all-time great playoff performance from star Jimmy Butler, who finished Game 6 with 47 points on 16-of-29 shooting from the field, 4-of-8 shooting on threes and 11-of-11 shooting from the foul line, nine rebounds, eight assists, four steals and one block in 46 minutes. It marked the most points Butler has ever scored in a playoff game, the third-most points he has scored in any game during his NBA career, and also the seventh-most points scored by any player in an elimination game in NBA history.
“Jimmy Butler is a great competitor, he really is,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “You can define him in a lot of different ways, but his competitive will is as high as anybody that has played this game. He put his fingerprints on this game.”
Butler revealed following Friday’s win that he received encouragement from retired Heat great Dwyane Wade through a phone call on Friday morning hours before Game 6.
“D-Wade never hits me until his voice is really, really needed. And it was,” Butler said. “I texted him and told him I appreciate him for it. Just to let me go out there, continue to build on that legacy and make sure that we win.”
Butler, very modestly, labeled his historic night as “decent.” But Heat teammate Kyle Lowry corrected Butler and described his Game 6 stat line as “[bleeping] incredible” before catching himself and pleading for the NBA not to fine him for using expletive language.
“He’s such a humble basketball player,” Lowry continued. “The work he does put in, I witness it. It’s incredible to have a guy like him next to me. I’ve played with some great players, and he’s one of the best players I’ve played with. To do it on this stage, Game 6, win or go home, do or die, I wouldn’t want to lace them up with any other people but this guy.”
The Heat knows its work isn’t done yet, though. To complete the deal, the Heat will have to find a way to defeat the Celtics for a fourth time in seven games on Sunday in Miami.
The Celtics, led by stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, have already won two of the three games played at FTX Arena in the series.
“I think we just did our job,” Butler said, downplaying the Heat’s Game 6 win in Boston. “We’ve been saying it this entire series: It’s not finished yet. We got Game 7 at the crib and we need a win.”
One thing is for sure, the doubt from Green and others will continue to motivate the Heat as long as its alive in the playoffs.
“Draymond broke the code,” Heat veteran and captain Udonis Haslem said to Yahoo Sports on Friday night. “You ain’t supposed to say some [expletive] like that. That’s disrespectful. He knows better than that.
“He let [Shaquille O’Neal] peer pressure him into saying some [expletive] he ain’t got no business saying. I didn’t sleep much after he said that. That was some [expletive]. ... We’re going home [for Game 7]. We did what we were supposed to do. Don’t ever count us out.”
But the Heat will need to prove many wrong again on Sunday, with the Celtics currently 2.5-point betting favorites over the Heat despite being the road team in Game 7. Home teams have won Game 7 about 76.4 percent of the time in NBA history.
The Heat’s injury issues explain part of the reason why it was expected to lose Game 6 and will enter Game 7 as the underdog.
Guard Tyler Herro, who was named the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year this season, has missed the last three games because of a strained left groin and he’s listed as questionable for Game 7. Without Herro, the Heat is missing a player who averaged 20.7 points on a team-high 17 shots per game in the regular season.
Then Butler (right knee inflammation) and Lowry (strained left hamstring) have also been dealing with their own respective ailments that have limited them at times during the East finals. The encouraging news is that Butler and Lowry turned in their best games of the series, and arguably the playoffs, in Friday’s victory.
“We’ve had some very tough times during this series. But we have guys that will just pick themselves up and get onto the next fight,” Spoelstra said. “This is the way it should be with these two teams. It should have gone seven games. The margin for error on both sides is so small. There’s no two better words in pro sports than ‘Game 7.’”
It will be the first Game 7 experience for a few players in the Heat’s rotation, including starters Bam Adebayo and Max Strus. It will also mark the 11th Game 7 that the Heat has played in franchise history, with the last one coming in the second round of the 2016 playoffs against the Raptors in Toronto.
“Block out the noise as much as possible and get ready to play a regular game like you’ve been playing,” Tucker said of his advice to teammates entering Sunday’s Game 7. “It’s going to be tough. But I think we’re built for it. I think our guys are built to be locked in, get it done.”
This story was originally published May 28, 2022 at 11:17 AM.
