After the Miami Heat suffered a devastating game six loss at home to give up what had been a 3-0 Eastern Conference Finals lead versus the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics, it would have been easy to count out the Heat in game seven at Boston--but, to paraphrase the best line of the previous NFL season, people may have written the Heat off but they didn't write back, routing the Celtics 103-84 to earn their second trip to the NBA Finals in the past four seasons. Jimmy Butler scored a game-high 28 points while grabbing seven rebounds and passing for six assists; in recognition of his all-around excellence during the series (24.2 ppg, 7.7 rpg, 6.2 apg, 2.5 spg), Butler won the second annual Larry Bird Eastern Conference Finals MVP. Caleb Martin scored a playoff career-high 26 points and fell just one vote short of winning the Eastern Conference Finals MVP. He shot 10-16 from the field, tied for the team lead with 10 rebounds, and scored seven more points than any Celtic. Bam Adebayo added 12 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists. The Heat shot 14-28 (.500) from three point range, which is a credit to them but also an indictment of the Celtics' defense. Five Heat players hit at least two three pointers, with Martin (four) and Butler (three) leading the way. The Heat became the first eighth seeded team to reach the NBA Finals since the New York Knicks in the lockout-shortened 1999 season, while the Celtics failed to become the first NBA team to rally from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series.
The Celtics failed to score at least 90 points in a game for the first time this season; they had their worst offensive output at the worst possible time. Jaylen Brown finished with 19 points on 8-23 field goal shooting while compiling eight rebounds, five assists, and eight turnovers. Only a field goal that cut the Heat's lead from 23 to 21 with 4:56 remaining in the fourth quarter prevented Brown from posting a "Harden" (a playoff game in which a player has more turnovers than field goals made). Brown was one of three Celtics to score in double figures. Derrick White, whose last second putback won game six, scored 18 points. Jayson Tatum, who erupted for a record 51 points in Boston's game seven win against Philadelphia, scored 14 points on 5-13 field goal shooting while grabbing a game-high 11 rebounds. He was clearly hobbled and limited by a sprained left ankle that he suffered on Boston's first possession of the game when he landed on Gabe Vincent's foot after driving to the hoop. Tatum's injury is unfortunate but it is also part of the sport, as Tatum noted after the game--and it could be argued that if the Celtics had managed to win one of the three games that they lost earlier in this series then there would not have been a seventh game in which Tatum got injured. Tatum gutted it out to play 41 minutes.
It should be remembered that the Heat ranked among the league leaders in games missed due to injury this season, and they won the Eastern Conference Finals without the services of Tyler Herro (their third leading scorer in the 2022-23 regular season) and Victor Oladipo, a two-time former All-Star who averaged 10.7 ppg during the regular season and 11.5 ppg in two playoff games as a key reserve before suffering a season-ending torn patellar tendon. Herro and Oladipo are not in the same class as Tatum, and the Heat had time to figure out how to survive without them while Boston lost Tatum in an elimination game, but the point is that injuries can strike any team at any time.
Even though Brown's eight turnovers stick out, the Celtics only had three more turnovers than the Heat (15-12). The Heat outrebounded the Celtics 42-40, but that slim margin did not lead to a 19 point blowout. The one statistical category in which the Heat dominated the Celtics was field goal percentage (.488 to .390), and specifically three point field goal percentage (.500 to .214). Throughout the series, the Celtics were at their best--both in the games that they won, and in the segments of their losses when they had the lead--when they attacked the paint to score, which resulted in high percentage shots in the paint, free throws, and wide open three pointers when the Heat's defense collapsed. The Celtics ranked second in the league in both three point field goals made and three point field goals attempted while ranking sixth in three point field goal percentage, and their three point field goal attempts in game seven were in line with their regular season per game average (42.6), but there is a difference between creating open three point shots off of paint attacks versus just jacking up three pointers; also, in this matchup the Celtics enjoyed a size advantage and they had the advantage of having multiple playmakers, so instead of looking like the Houston Rockets in game seven of the 2018 Western Conference Finals the Celtics should have used their advantages in size and playmaking to create better shots. Obviously, Miami's defense played a role in the Celtics' poor shooting, but the Celtics won three games in this series by attacking the paint against that same defense. This is not an "adjustment" or an "in game adjustment," because it is not a new strategy or concept; it is the opposite: the Celtics should have stuck with the game plan that had been most successful throughout the series and throughout the season. The problem is not that the Celtics attempted 42 three pointers, nor is the problem merely that they had a bad shooting game; the problem is the quality of the shots that the Celtics created.
Also, the Celtics ranked fifth in the league in defensive field goal percentage (.463) and fourth in the league in three point defensive field goal percentage (.345), so if their game seven defense had been up to par they still would have been in striking distance at the end of the game instead of losing by 19 points. The current era is often portrayed as one in which shooting and floor spacing dominate, but attacking the paint and playing consistent defense are still the two most important ingredients in a championship recipe.
The NBA is often described as a fourth quarter league, but the reality is that many NBA games are decided in the first quarter--or, at the very least, the parameters of the final outcome are established in the early going. Here, the Heat led 22-15 after a first quarter in which the Celtics shot 6-23 (.261) from the field and committed four turnovers. The Heat did not shoot a high percentage from the field (.417), but they made it clear that the Celtics would have to scratch and claw just to obtain open shots. By halftime, the Heat led 52-41, and they never trailed the rest of the way.
It is fascinating to examine contrasting narratives arising out of similar facts. If the Celtics and Heat had traded wins throughout the series prior to game seven, then the narrative would be that this was a great series featuring evenly matched teams, and there would be much talk about the "chess match" between two coaches making adjustments both in games and in between games--but because Miami raced to a 3-0 lead, a narrative took hold that rookie Boston Coach Joe Mazzulla is not the right man for the job. After the Celtics won three straight games, the people who prematurely called for Mazzulla to be fired scrambled to devise a narrative that fit both the first three games and the next three games while also praying that the Celtics lost game seven so that they could rehabilitate their original narrative.
In contrast, last season these same teams--featuring mostly the same core rotation players--also contested a seven game Eastern Conference Finals, but because neither team took a 3-0 lead we did not hear as much of the "coach is not making enough adjustments" narrative. Boston won game seven at Miami last season, leading wire to wire, though the final margin was much closer than the final margin this time. Both last year and this year each team lost multiple games at home during the Eastern Conference Finals; are the home losses a sign of bad coaching or loss of focus, or are they just an indicator that these teams are evenly matched and they are both tough-minded enough to win on the road?
Boston and Miami have contested 14 Eastern Conference Finals games over the last two seasons and the tally is 7-7 with each team winning one series--but we are supposed to believe that one team lacks focus and has a bad coach, while the other team is perfect. I don't mean to take anything away from the Heat--they are fantastic--but it is odd that there is such a strong narrative that it is not enough to praise the Heat without attacking the Celtics. Instead of a narrative depicting the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals as a classic clash of two different playing styles, we are fed a narrative that portrays the Heat heroically while blasting the Celtics. It is human nature to attempt to explain a sequence of events as part of one large narrative, but in the real world things are rarely that simple; the Heat players and Coach Erik Spoelstra deserve praise for winning the series this year after losing to the Celtics last year, but the Celtics' loss this season is not necessarily a sign that the team is burdened with a fatal flaw or a set of fatal flaws: if the two greatest teams ever coached by the two greatest coaches met in a seven game series, it would not be correct or fair to focus more on what the losing team did poorly than on what the winning team did well.
The Heat have reached the NBA Finals more often since 2006 (seven times) than any other franchise. Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal led Miami to the 2006 NBA championship, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh formed a superteam that led the Heat to four straight NBA Finals and back to back titles, and now Jimmy Butler has a chance to win his first NBA title in his second NBA Finals appearance with the Heat after losing to the L.A. Lakers in the 2020 NBA Finals in the Orlando "bubble."