No sweep: Miami up 3-1 as East finals returns to Boston. No need for Heat to worry ... right? | Opinion
The Boston Celtics showed the fight of a desperate team Tuesday night in Miami — the spine of a team getting belittled and pilloried nationally. It may have been a few games too late.
The Miami Heat is headed to the airport for another road game about a week sooner than they’d hoped, their sweep denied but their control of the NBA Eastern Conference finals still solid if history knows anything. Teams up 3-1 are 178-9 all-time in advancing in league history under the current playoff format, a 95.2 percent likelihood.
So nothing changed much in Game 4 Tuesday except that this final fight to reach the NBA Finals got a little bit interesting.
Enough to send the Celtics home with a little hope.
Boston saved its season at least for a bit with a convincing 116-99 victory in Miami and heads north for Game 5 Thursday night.
The Celtics had 18-0 and 12-0 runs in the second half to seize the game, outscoring Miami 66-43 after halftime.
“We gotta play with a lot more energy, like our backs are against the wall,” said Jimmy Butler, who scored 29 but was quiet in the second and third periods. “We let go of the rope on the defensive side of the ball. Our energy was low, which we cannot have.”
Still, Butler said, “We’ll be OK. We’re gonna get one on the road.”
History is telling Heat fans not to worry and the fans in green to not get their hopes up. Teams that led a series 3-0 like Miami are 151-0 all-time in NBA history, and 112-0 since the advent of the current 16-team playoff format.
Boston coming back to win this would make history with something never done, and Miami not advancing would be a colossally unprecedented collapse.
The possibility alone lends drama to a series bereft of that until Boston seized Game 4 with an 18-0 run from late in the second quarter into the third.
What had been a Celtics trademark all season but escaped them the first three games — the three-point shot — returned with a vengeance as Boston sank 19-of-45 shots from beyond the arc.
“They got a lot of clean looks,” said coach Erik Spoelstra. “We weren’t always on the same page defensively. And we were a little bit stagnant offensively, which hurt us on both ends.”
Bam Adebayo had minimal impact with only 10 points and five rebounds. He had four of Miami’s 15 turnovers.
“For me, man, next game I gotta be better,” he said. “They disrupted our game flow. We gotta retaliate.”
Miami shot only 43.6 percent and made only 25 percent on 3’s. Boston shot 51.2 percent and 42.2 on 3’s led by Jayson Tatum’s 34 points
The Heat had the chance at home to put away a talented, favored opponent but failed to. Will it come back to haunt?
Now the what-ifs are in play.
If Boston wins Game 5 at home, a strong possibility, it’s back to Miami with the pressure suddenly all over the Heat to avoid a Game 7 in Boston.
Celtics sixth-man Malcolm Brogdon, fresh off a bravado-inspiring zero-points effort in Game 3, had said prior to Tuesday’s must-win in Miami: “We still believe we are the better team.”
Sure, Malcolm. I get it. I still believe I am a better writer than Charles Dickens, but, see, I recognize the evidence of that may be lacking.
In fairness, the Celtics were the better team. Just not the first three times in a row that it mattered.
Now Brogdon still has a chance to be right as the West champion Denver Nuggets and two-time league MVP Nikola Jokic await the winner.
Miami failed to do its part in South Florida’s Operation Double-Sweep, now it’s up to the Florida Panthers, up 3-0 in the NHL Eastern finals and hoping to broom Carolina on Wednesday night in Sunrise.
History can be made. Two No. 8 seeds have never reached the NBA Finals and Stanley Cup Final the same season — let alone two from the same market. Fans of the Heat and Panthers, either or both, had best appreciate this is a generational rarity we are experiencing.
Miami would be the underdog in the NBA Finals against Denver.
The Heat also was the big underdog in this Boston series. It made sense.
Made sense they were underdogs against Milwaukee in the first round and then maybe against New York, too.
But how many more favorites must Miami beat to finally get the respect it deserves?
It is not a rhetorical question.
The answer is one.
One more game won against Boston.
Then one more series won against Denver.
This story was originally published May 23, 2023 at 10:58 PM.
