Heat dominating Celtics, up 3-0 in East finals. What changed from last year’s matchup?
The one-year anniversary of the Miami Heat’s Game 7 home loss to the Boston Celtics in last season’s Eastern Conference finals is just days away. But Heat coaches and players don’t need that anniversary to remind them of the pain they felt that day.
The Heat remembers it vividly, but soon that bad memory inflicted by the Celtics could be replaced with one of the best basketball moments of their lives at the expense of the Celtics.
The Heat’s improbable playoff run as a No. 8 seed continued with Sunday night’s 128-102 blowout home win over the second-seeded Celtics to take a commanding 3-0 series lead in this year’s East finals. The Heat will go for the sweep of the Celtics in Game 4 on Tuesday at Kaseya Center (8:30 p.m., TNT).
“I just think that we got the matchup we wanted,” Heat wing Caleb Martin said. “We got to see the team who took us out last year, and there’s nothing like a second crack at it. So I think that we are just trying to take advantage of that and we are playing like we have something to prove. We’re just a bunch of guys with a chip on our shoulder, so we just want to continue to prove that.”
The Heat is one win from clinching its seventh NBA Finals appearance in franchise history, making its sixth NBA Finals appearance in the past 13 seasons and becoming only the second No. 8 seed to advance to the NBA Finals. No No. 8 seed has never won an NBA championship.
Meanwhile, the Celtics need to do something no other NBA team has done to stop the Heat from making the NBA Finals. NBA teams are 0-149 all time when trailing a best-of-7 series 0-3.
“Being No. 1 in the conference and you lose in the Eastern Conference finals, it does sting,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said as he reflected on last season’s disappointing finish.
Even after losing last season’s starting power forward P.J. Tucker in free agency and guards Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo to injuries early in this season’s playoff run, the Heat is somehow in position to replace last year’s pain with one of the most memorable moments in franchise history in the coming days.
“Everything that we went through previously, and some of the emotions are coming out,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, hinting at last season’s East finals loss to the Celtics. “I like that, and then we’re just going to direct it and keep on focusing on the task at hand. We’ll decompress [Monday] but we’ll really get our minds right to finish this thing off.”
How is the Heat doing this? Here are five things that are different from last season’s East finals matchup between Miami and Boston:
▪ The biggest difference is the Heat is simply making shots.
The Heat pushed the Celtics to seven games last season despite shooting just 41.6 percent from the field and 30 percent on threes in the series.
In this season’s East finals, the Heat is shooting a ridiculously efficient 51.9 percent from the field and 47.8 percent from three-point range.
On the other side, the Celtics are shooting just 29.2 percent from beyond the arc in this year’s series.
As a result, Miami has outscored Boston 132-93 from three-point range in this season’s East finals. The Celtics outscored the Heat by 30 points from three-point range in last season’s series.
▪ The Heat’s leading duo of Adebayo and Jimmy Butler has been better than the Celtics’ leading duo of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.
Adebayo and Butler have combined to average 44.3 points, 16.3 rebounds and 11.7 assists per game while shooting 50 percent from the field in this year’s East finals.
Brown and Tatum have combined to average 42.7 points, 16.3 rebounds and seven assists per game while shooting 41.4 percent from the field and 7 of 40 (17.5 percent) from three-point range in this season’s East finals.
In last season’s conference finals, Brown and Tatum were much more productive and efficient. They combined to average 49.1 points per game on 47.5 percent shooting from the field on 37-of-98 (37.8 percent) shooting from beyond the arc in that seven-game series.
The Heat has dominated the Celtics with Adebayo and Butler on the court together in this season’s conference finals, outscoring Boston by 35.1 points per 100 possessions in those minutes. The Heat only outscored the Celtics by 2.7 points per 100 possessions with Adebayo and Butler on the court in last year’s East finals.
▪ The Heat’s supporting cast has also been better than the Celtics’ role players in this season’s matchup.
Heat are a few examples:
Martin averaged 7.3 points, 3.5 rebounds and 0.3 assists per game while shooting 48.6 percent from the field and 46.7 percent from three-point range in last year’s East finals. He’s averaging 19.3 points, 3.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game while shooting 63.2 percent from the field and 47.6 percent from deep in this year’s conference finals.
Heat guard Gabe Vincent averaged 8.7 points per game on 38.5 percent shooting from the field and 35.3 percent shooting from beyond the arc in last season’s East finals. In this season’s series against the Celtics, Vincent is averaging 17.7 points per game on 60.7 percent shooting from the field and 55.6 percent shooting from three-point range.
Duncan Robinson (averaging 12.3 points per game on 53.3 percent shooting from deep in this season’s East finals) and Max Strus (averaging 12 points per game on 38.9 percent shooting from three-point range in this season’s East finals) have also been very good.
“To their credit, they’re playing well above their means,” Brown said of the Heat’s supporting cast. “They’re balling right now. I’ve got to give them respect, Gabe Vincent, Martin, Strus, Duncan Robinson, guys that we should be able to keep under control are playing their [butts] off.”
For the Celtics, the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Malcolm Brogdon has averaged just 10.7 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game while shooting 37.9 percent from the field and 25 percent on threes in this year’s conference finals. He averaged 14.9 points, 4.2 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game while shooting 48.4 percent from the field and 44.4 percent from three-point range this regular season.
▪ The Heat has been the better fourth-quarter team in this season’s conference finals, outscoring the Celtics by seven points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter during the series. Tatum has yet to make a fourth-quarter field goal through the first three games of the series.
The Celtics outscored the Heat by 6.2 points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter of last year’s East finals.
“I feel like the fourth quarter is when everything matters the most,” Adebayo said. “And not discrediting the first three quarters, but when you get in that fourth quarter and everybody has rallied around each other in that huddle, and it’s win the quarter, win the game, a lot of us take that to heart. I know I do, especially.”
▪ More evidence of the Heat’s incredible shot-making in this year’s series: Miami is shooting 50.9 percent on 17.7 catch-and-shoot three-point attempts per game in this season’s East finals compared to 31.7 percent on 20.7 catch-and-shoot three-point attempts per game in last season’s conference finals.
“We’re just a connected group. You just kind of feel it,” Martin said. “When you’re a good team and you’re rolling and you’re flowing, you can feel it as a team.”
This story was originally published May 22, 2023 at 12:05 PM.
