Heat advance to NBA Finals with Game 7 win over Celtics (2024)

BOSTON — The Miami Heat were not only playing for an NBA Finals berth, but also to make sure they weren’t on the very wrong side of American sports history.

Two missions accomplished with one stone.

The Heat beat the Boston Celtics, 103-84, in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals on Monday night, advancing to the championship round to play the Denver Nuggets. Game 1 is at 8:30 p.m. Thursday in Denver.

Miami is in the finals for the seventh time in franchise history, and as a massive footnote, stopped the Celtics from becoming the first NBA team ever — and just the sixth in major American pro sports — to win a series after trailing 3-0.

The Celtics are the 151st team to try and fail, and just the fourth to reach a Game 7 and lose. They are the first out of the four to lose at home.

As it is, the Heat are the second team to advance to the finals as a No. 8 seed and first since the Knicks in 1999. The Heat also exacted revenge on Boston, which beat them in Game 7 of the conference finals last season. That game was a heartstopper that came down to the end.

This was the opposite in every way.

“What happened last year, you know, obviously was on our mind and it drove us this year,” said Heat coach Erik Spoelstra, who now has 108 career playoff wins, three shy of tying Doc Rivers for fourth all-time among NBA coaches. “That’s what you always hope for with competition, that it can drive you to a higher level. I think that’s what you saw in this series, this year, to be able to overcome a lot of stuff.”

Jimmy Butler was voted the MVP of the conference finals by media covering the series — and awarded the Larry Bird trophy — after he led the Heat in scoring both in Game 7 (28 points) and in three of their four wins. He nearly put them into the finals in Game 6 with a 10-point outburst over the game’s final minutes, and it was his 3-pointer near the end of Game 7 last year against the Celtics that missed.

Butler’s redemption came on a night where he had to fight through another tough shooting game (12 of 28). He added seven rebounds and six assists and scored nine in the fourth quarter.

“I just know why Coach Pat and Coach Spo wanted me to be here, and that’s to compete at a high level and to win championships,” Butler said. “I’m just confident. I know the work that we all put into it, so I know what we’re capable of. Nobody is satisfied. We haven’t done anything. We don’t play just to win the Eastern Conference; we play to win the whole thing.”

Caleb Martin, an undrafted player who was once in the G League, finished off a series for the ages with 26 points and 10 rebounds and received four votes (out of nine) for MVP. He scored in double figures in all seven games.

Martin, 27, came off the bench for the first five games in this series and averaged 17.6 points — the fifth-most by a reserve in conference finals history. Spoelstra inserted him into the starting lineup for Game 6, in which he scored 21 points in Miami’s stunning, buzzer-beating loss.

Martin was 11 of 16 with four 3s and eight rebounds in Game 7. He scored the final five points of the third quarter for the Heat, when the game was at perhaps its most intense moments since early in the first, with a 3 and then a turnaround jumper with almost no time left to put the Heat back up by 10.

“If you’re a real competitor and it’s in your soul, and that’s what Caleb is, he’s a competitor. Every bit the competitor that you talk about with Jimmy or Bam or whatever. Caleb is a competitor,” Spoelstra said. “He has so much respect in that locker room just because of how hard he competes. It’s like his last breath on every single possession, and I love the guy for that.”

Bam Adebayo gutted his way to 12 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists. Gabe Vincent and Duncan Robinson each added 10 points.

The Celtics, who had already won five elimination games this postseason and a Game 7 in the second round, laid an egg at the 3-point line, where they were 9 of 42. They were undisciplined with the ball and their best player — one of the great scorers in Game 7 history — had a tough night.

Jayson Tatum finished with 14 points on just 13 shots. He appeared to roll his left ankle early in the first quarter, and though he stayed in the game, didn’t have near the lift or burst onlookers are accustomed to seeing from him, especially in Game 7s. Against the 76ers in Game 7 last series, he set an NBA record with 51 points and is now the third-highest scoring player in Game 7 history. He passed Bill Russell (186 points) on Monday night.

“I mean, yeah, he took a fall early,” Celtics guard Marcus Smart said of Tatum. “He hurt his ankle really bad early. He could have came out the game. He stayed in, he tried to fight. Obviously, you can see he wasn’t himself. He wasn’t as explosive. The ankle was really killing him. He tried to fight, it just didn’t go in his favor. It didn’t go in any of our favors but we continued just to fight and help him and try to get through.”

Jaylen Brown was Boston’s leading scorer with 19 points, but he committed eight turnovers, shot 8 of 23 from the field and 1 of 9 from 3. Brown was one shy of tying Donovan Mitchell’s record for turnovers in a Game 7.

Derrick White, the hero of Game 6, added 18 points. He scored 13 in the third quarter, when the Celtics cut a 16-point deficit down to six (on a White 3 with 4:15 left).

“When we were down 3-0, the thing was how do we want to be defined?” Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought they showed a lot of character by even getting to this point.”

Home teams were 111-36 in Game 7, and the Celtics’ 27 wins in Game 7s are by far the most in history. But they’re stuck on the number and their season is over. They join the 2003 Portland Trail Blazers, the 1994 Denver Nuggets, and 1951 New York Knicks as teams to lose a Game 7 after falling behind 3-0.

The Heat needed to win a Play-In finale just to make the playoffs, and trailed in that game to Chicago in the fourth quarter. They won, obviously, and then shocked the NBA by upsetting the league’s best regular-season team, the Milwaukee Bucks, in five games.

Miami advanced past the Knicks in six games, and took the first three of the conference finals.

Given what happened to the Heat in Game 6 — Butler put them ahead with three foul shots with three seconds left, only for White to rebound a missed Smart 3 and put it in at the buzzer — what the Heat accomplished on the road in Game 7 either A.) Astonishing; B.) Right in line with a season-long trend of succeeding in the most difficult of circ*mstances.

The Nuggets have been the best team in the West all season. The road gets harder for the Heat.

Just the way they like it.

“Everybody’s confidence is so high,” Butler said. “We have belief that we can do something incredibly special. So we are going to hit the ground running when we get to Denver, and I like our chances.”

Why the Celtics lost Game 7

The Celtics struggled to find their identity all season, but had such overwhelming talent that they still managed to claw all the way to Game 7 of the conference finals. Then Tatum hurt his leg on the first play of the game, was never right and the Celtics offense crumbled.

It was so apparent how much Tatum had been keeping their disjointed half-court offense afloat all season when he could no longer carve his way into the paint and bend the defense to his will. The Celtics missing their first dozen 3s of the night was obviously embarrassing, but it was the shocking uncertainty and disjointedness they operated with that made this game truly devastating for a franchise trying to make history.

The Celtics didn’t have the connectivity and extra effort on defense that brought them back to a Game 7, plus Miami torched them again with some great contested shooting. The Celtics knew they had to push Miami out of its comfort zone and get ultra aggressive, but they couldn’t make it happen.

This team so often should know what to do, but doesn’t quite get there. Now the season has ended in a humiliation. —Weiss

Tatum, Brown struggle in Game 7

After Tatum rolled his ankle, Brown needed to play a bigger role because of the injury but didn’t produce efficient offense. The Celtics flopped on offense during the first quarter, on defense during the second and couldn’t sustain a brief comeback attempt in the second half.

The fourth quarter turned ugly after Tatum missed a layup during the opening moments of it and the Heat responded with a score at the other end. The loss leaves Boston headed toward a critical offseason after failing deep in the playoffs for a second straight year. — King

Why I voted Caleb Martin for MVP

I voted for Martin for series MVP because he was, unarguably, Miami’s most consistent player for seven games, and the four 3s he made in Game 7, especially the one at the end of the third quarter, were some of the biggest shots of the night.

Butler though was dominant in the first two games, which set the tone. The Heat were huge underdogs, and to come into Boston and win the first two, among other things, put the Celtics in a position where they could be finished off by that one big “Jimmy game.”

I’d argue that game never came — he scored nine in the fourth quarter of a game that quickly got out of hand — but his presence, his defense, and the confidence he afforded teammates were all invaluable.

Finally, the Celtics made the second-most 3s and had the fourth-best offense in the NBA all season. What the Heat did defensively on Monday cannot be overlooked. — Vardon

Required reading

• Celtics leave history untouched with Game 7 disaster: ‘We failed. We let the whole city down.’
• 2023 NBA Finals odds: Nuggets open as favorites over Heat
• Most fans won’t remember ’22-23 Celtics. After Game 7 flop, all they have is a highlight

(Photo: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)