The fun starts now as Miami Heat’s joy-ride postseason hits a bump with loss to Boston | Opinion
This Miami Heat playoff run had been a ride, a joy ride. Giddy stuff. Top down, cool breeze, care free.
It is something different now. It has turned compelling in a way it hadn’t been. Tight, taut. Suddenly now, there is the kind of tension and challenge you expect when an NBA postseason has gotten this close to a chance at a championship.
It’s fun now. Heart palpitating, edge-of-your-seat, edge-of-a-cliff fun.
Now it gets real.
The Heat fell to the Boston Celtics, 117-106, on Saturday night in the Orlando bubble in Eastern Conference finals Game 3, Miami’s best-of-7 series lead now down to 2-1.
Jaylen Brown’s 26 points and Jayson Tatum’s 25 led Boston. Miami has had revolving heroes this postseason but none stood out enough Saturday. Bam Adebayo raised his hand with 27 points on 10-for-14 shooting. Tyler Herro’s monster third quarter and 22-point night spoke loud, too. But Miami shot only 38.8 percent as a team, at one point missing 15 3-pointers in a row.
Even in the relief of victory, though, came anxiety for Boston, which led by 20 at one point but held on late more than won with any comfort.
And the suddenly jacked-up tension gets to build, marinate and simmer now, because Game 4 isn’t until Wednesday night.
Boston was desperate. Plainly. It showed with the lockerroom combustion and 1 a.m. soul-searching meeting after the previous loss. It showed with Gordon Hayward’s perhaps-premature return from injury off the bench Saturday. Another loss and the brooms would have been out for a Miami sweep. No team in the history of the NBA playoffs has come back from a 3-0 deficit to win. Not once. Ever.
Miami would have had one foot in the NBA Finals — presumably a delicious matchup with the Los Angeles Lakers and former Heat star LeBron James.
Now? That’s all still out there, still ahead, but the road got longer, the climb higher on Saturday night.
Miami had been a surreal 10-1 this postseason after a sweep of Indiana, then an unexpected cruise past No. 1 seed Milwaukee, then two straight rally-wins over better-seeded Boston.
No Heat team — not even the three championship winners — had ever begun a postseason 11-1. This unlikely band of underdogs could have been the first, but for the first time in this series Miami failed to overcome a double-digit deficit.
The down-to-earth result was no surprise. Law of averages stuff. The question now: How does Miami respond?
Despite the Heat’s not-unexpected loss it was quite the high-stakes night for South Florida sports (such a statement these days always requiring the in-a-pandemic caveat).
The Miami Marlins’ playoff chase — every bit as unlikely as the Heat’s if not more so — continued with a 7-3 home win over the Washington Nationals.
And the 17th-ranked Miami Hurricanes traveled to meet No. 18 Louisville in UM’s Atlantic Coast Conference opener, and headed home with a big victory.
Meanwhile, in the Orlando bubble, we were reminded why a best-of-7 series has it all over the one-and-done aspect that college hoops fans love so much about the NCAA Tournament.
The series changes with every result when the thing is competitive, the drama growing. It becomes a two-week mini-soap opera, a chess match for the coaches.. Every loss can be a test of not much less than manhood, certainly of confidence and will, of pride and resolve.
The Heat have enjoyed the carefree, nothing-to-lose confidence of the underdog this postseason.
Now they begin to feel something entirely different: A bit of pressure. The imperative to respond.
It is a heavyweight fight that gets you to the prize, the NBA Finals.
Saturday night, it became just that.
This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 11:22 PM.
