Memories from last year’s heartbreak remain for Heat ahead of East finals rematch vs. Celtics
Last year, the Eastern Conference finals matchup between the Miami Heat and Boston Celtics did not come as a surprise. The Heat entered the playoffs as the East’s top seed and the Celtics entered as the second seed.
The Heat and Celtics will face off in the conference finals for the second consecutive season and third time in the past four seasons this year, but the context surrounding this upcoming series is different. The Celtics were supposed to get here as the East’s No. 2 seed, but the expectation was the Heat would be eliminated a few rounds ago after qualifying for the playoffs through the play-in tournament as the No. 8 seed.
But one month into the playoffs, the Heat and Celtics are again the final two East teams left standing.
“Each year is different,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, as the team returned to practice on Monday in preparation for Wednesday’s Game 1 at TD Garden. “So even though everybody wants to make it the exact same, there’s different experiences and there’s slightly different personnel and different rotations, and slightly different styles of play for both teams. That’s why you just have to be open minded to the competition.
“We’re grateful for this opportunity to be in the conference finals. We’re just grateful that with everything we’ve gone through that it turned out this way.”
By the numbers, the Celtics enter as the heavy favorite. The Heat is just the second No. 8 seed to make it to the conference finals since the current 16-team NBA playoff format was instituted in the 1983-84 season and the first team since at least 2000 to advance to the conference finals after posting a negative point differential in the regular season.
The Celtics closed the regular season with the NBA’s second-best offensive rating, second-best defensive rating and top net rating. Boston is the only team in the league that finished the regular season with both a top-five offensive rating and defensive rating
Meanwhile, the Heat finished the regular season with the 25th-ranked offensive rating, ninth-ranked defensive rating and 21st-ranked net rating. Miami posted the worst regular-season net rating among the 20 NBA teams that qualified for this year’s postseason.
The betting odds confirm Miami’s underdog status, with BetOnline listing the Celtics as a 1-to-6 favorite (-600 or 85.7 percent chance) to win the series. The betting line for Wednesday’s Game 1 opened with the Celtics as an eight-point favorite, according to DraftKings.
According to ESPN Analytics, the Heat has just a 3 percent chance of defeating the Celtics to reach the NBA Finals.
“They’re good. They can do a lot of different things,” Heat forward Max Strus said of the Celtics. “They can switch, they can muck up the paint, they’re a heck of a team. They’ve been good all year, they’ve got a lot of talented guys. But we’re playing our best basketball right now and I’ll take us against anybody.”
If last season’s conference finals between the Heat and Celtics is any indication, this year’s series featuring many of the same players could be a long one. Miami and Boston went the full seven games last season before the Celtics escaped Game 7 in Miami with a 100-96 win.
The lasting memory from last year’s Game 7 came in the final seconds, when Heat star Jimmy Butler grabbed a defensive rebound with an opportunity to tie or give the Heat the lead. Instead of going for the tie, Butler opted for a pull-up three-pointer that bounced off the front of the rim with 16.6 seconds to play and ended Miami’s hopes of making the NBA Finals.
“We all think about it still,” Strus said of that shot. “We were that close and now we’re that close again to being in that same position. ... We’re right where we want to be. This is what we talked about all season, being in this position. So we’re excited to be here and ready for the opportunity.”
The Heat and Celtics split their regular-season series 2-2 this year.
Those results probably don’t mean much, considering Butler missed two of those games, the Celtics were without three starters in Jaylen Brown, Al Horford and Marcus Smart and Sixth Man of the Year Malcolm Brogdon in one of those games and their regular-season series ended before the Heat added forward Kevin Love and center Cody Zeller in February.
“We’re familiar with them. They’re familiar with us,” Heat forward Caleb Martin said. “We have a lot of film to hash through to see what those adjustments will be. They’re playing a couple guys, we’re not playing a couple guys [that played in last year’s series]. When we go through the film, we’ll recognize the things we need to do. As long as we play with the same confidence, we’ll be in good shape.”
The Heat is still led by the duo of Bam Adebayo and Butler and the Celtics are still led by the duo of Brown and Jayson Tatum. Important Heat pieces like Kyle Lowry, Martin, Strus, Gabe Vincent still surround Adebayo and Butler, while important Celtics pieces like Horford, Robert Williams, Smart, Derrick White and Grant Williams still surround Brown and Tatum.
But there have been changes around the edges since last year’s meeting. The Heat added Love and Zeller in February and lost P.J. Tucker in free agency last summer, while the Celtics got stronger by signing Brogdon last offseason to bolster their bench.
The Heat also enters this year’s conference finals without starting guard Tyler Herro and reserve guard Victor Oladipo because of injuries. The Celtics are healthy entering the series but are led by first-year head coach Joe Mazzulla.
“I remember how I felt when we walked off that court last year,” Adebayo said. “So I feel like everybody has that kind of mentality. They want to be better than they were last year.”
Despite a rough regular season filled with injury issues and inconsistent play, the Heat somehow earned an opportunity to avenge last season’s pain.
The Heat and Celtics have faced each other 26 times since the start of the 2019-20 season, including the regular season and playoffs, and have split those matchups 13-13.
The tie will be broken in the coming weeks.
“I wish I could have scripted this or told the team on the first day of training camp,” Spoelstra said, “‘Hey, we’re going to go through a lot of stuff this year and sometimes it’s going to feel like we’re in basketball hell. But we’re going to get tougher, stronger from all these experiences. It’s going to bring us closer together. And then at the end of the day, we’re going to face Boston in the conference finals. So just stay with it.’ I wish I could have said that on the first day of training camp.”
