As it turns out, there’s a simple reason that no NBA team has ever won a series after falling behind 0-3: the better-prepared unit is typically the one in front. So it went in the Eastern Conference finals where, after losing their last three games, the Miami Heat regrouped for Game 7 and blew out the Boston Celtics 103-84 on the road on Monday night. After fighting so hard to stay alive, the Celtics were finally burned by the return of the same bad habits that put them on the brink of elimination in the first place.
“The hole we put ourselves in, it’s hard,” Celtics guard Malcolm Brogdon said after the game. “No one’s climbed out of that hole. It was the same tonight. We couldn’t climb out of the hole we created.”
Before breaking down what went wrong for Boston, let’s pay tribute to the Heat’s Caleb Martin, who was unfairly robbed of his rightful Eastern Conference finals MVP award by a single vote. Make no mistake, Jimmy Butler is a worthy winner if he’s being rewarded for his entire body of work this postseason. Playoff Jimmy remains the main reason that a No 8 seed has reached the NBA finals for just the second-time ever (the 1999 New York Knicks also accomplished the feat, losing 4-1 to the San Antonio Spurs).
However, Butler’s mid-series struggles were a major reason why the Celtics were able to claw their way back and force a Game 7. In contrast, whenever Miami needed a big basket against Boston, Martin was there. In Game 7, Martin scored 26 points on 16 shots without the benefit of a free throw, all while collecting 10 rebounds. By the end of the series, Martin had increased his points total to 132, a record for an undrafted player in a Conference final.
Made 3s in the series
— Tom Haberstroh (@tomhaberstroh) May 30, 2023
Jayson Tatum + Jaylen Brown 18
Caleb Martin + Tyler Herro* 22
*did not play
Yes, like six other players on this Heat roster, Martin was undrafted. After playing for the University of Nevada, Martin was signed as a free agent by the Charlotte Hornets, who eventually waived him. The Heat signed him to a two-way contract in 2021, meaning he split time between the NBA and the G League. Even if Martin had not earned MVP honors thanks to his play alone, he deserved it simply for being the perfect embodiment of a team wildly outperforming expectations.
After upsetting the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs, the Heat have continued to play the role of the underdogs. This will be the case once again when the NBA finals begin on Thursday, especially considering how dominant the now well-rested Denver Nuggets have looked in the Western Conference playoffs.
But recent history suggests that if the Nuggets don’t respect the Heat, Miami will hurt them. The Celtics did not respect the Heat, or at least not enough to avoid losing the first three games of the Conference finals in the first place. Had they played up to the expectations from the start, it’s likely they wouldn’t have had to look for inspiration from the 2004 Boston Red Sox in MLB and become the first team in their league to pull off an unprecedented comeback.
Maybe it was those memories that made a Boston win seem nearly inevitable heading into Game 7. Following Derrick White’s miracle buzzer-beater in Game 6, momentum favored the Celtics. Game 7 would be at home in TD Garden, making them heavy favorites. Some opponents, having failed to put away a dangerous team, would have wilted under that kind of pressure. The Heat, to their credit, refused to play into the narrative being written around them.
Now, true, Monday’s game would have played out differently if Jayson Tatum had not turned his ankle just 30 seconds into the contest. Tatum, Boston’s best player, was clearly not the same after the injury, ultimately scoring just 14 points on 5-for-13 shooting in the elimination game. With Tatum out, the team needed a big night from Jaylen Brown.
Instead, Brown committed eight turnovers and went 1-for-9 from three-point range, a major reason for the team’s miserable 21.4% long-distance shooting (the Heat, in contrast, went 14-for-28, nearly the same percentage they shot from two-point range.) Given that Brown is a free agent at the end of next season, his long-term future with the club is now officially in question.
Ultimately, the Celtics lost this series in its first two games. Boston began with home court advantage against an eighth-seeded team and promptly lost them both. Then again, what’s home court advantage to a team who have now gone 11-12 at TD Garden these last two postseasons?
If the Heat have been overachieving in recent years – this is their second NBA finals in four seasons – the Celtics have done the reverse. This season in particular, the team has earned a reputation for lapses in effort and concentration that have triggered in-game collapses and the occasional inexplicable no-show. Sometimes, when you’re talented enough, you earn yourself enough wriggle room that you can survive stretches where you play down to the perceived level of competition.
As the Celtics have hopefully learned by now, when you leave yourself with no margin for error or bad luck, one of the two will bring you down eventually. Maybe that has been the secret of success for the undrafted Martin and the overlooked Heat: you don’t have that luxury when the odds are stacked against you.
