Julien Jones

The Miami Heat played with fire in the first half of game two and got burned like Usher during all of his confessions. The early strategy was clear and obvious: play a Milwaukee Bucks style drop coverage early and allow the jump shooting happy Celtics to shoot a lot of threes. The strategy went a little deeper than that. It was clear that Miami wanted certain guys taking those shots, so they gave space to Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, Grant Williams, and Payton Pritchard when he came in for Jayson Tatum after he picked up an early second foul. Not only did they give those guys space to shoot, they also ran soft closeouts at them as well. The Heat doubled Tatum when he caught the ball at the top of the key and then rotated the bigs slowly on the backside to entice dangerous passes through the paint that they would try to deflect and force into a turnover. The calculus of the Heat was that by allowing the less efficient jump shooters on the Celtics to shoot perimeter jump shots early, they would get stops and be able to run out in transition and get easier relief buckets on the other side. Their calculus was wrong.

The two best defensive teams in the NBA took the floor last night in game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals. It was a tale of two halves. Boston asserted their dominance early and often as they blitzed the Heat right out of the gate. Robert Williams was a menace in the paint. Constantly finishing around the rim with lobs or catches in the paint and put backs over Bam Adebayo from offensive rebounds. Conversely, Williams was protecting the paint and denying access to the rim like an overzealous bouncer at a night club on South Beach. The Celtics were battle tested in the previous round against Milwaukee and were clearly there for a street fight. Jayson Tatum couldn’t miss a shot and the Celtics were outscoring the Heat in the paint by a significant margin. The Heat simply were not ready to match Boston’s fight and physicality early on and found themselves down 13 at home with 5 minutes to go until halftime.

Jimmy Butler went back to Philadelphia on a mission to end their season and he accomplished his objective in a masterful two-way player performance in game 6. The Philadelphia 76ers got booed by their home fans throughout the game as they watched their team get defenestrated by a much better team. The frustrated Philly fans booed, left the game early in the fourth, and were escorted out with “bye bye” beauty pageant parade waves from the CEO of Big Face Coffee.

They say a series doesn’t start until a team wins a game on the road. Well, the Heat did that on Sunday night, but it feels like this opening series with the Atlanta Hawks is virtually over now that the Heat have ended Atlanta’s home winning streak. After a tough 1-point loss on Friday night in game 3, the Heat responded in a major way and absolutely crushed Ice Trae and the Hawks in game 4. There was no tipoff delay for a suspicious package this time and the Heat fans were loud and proud at State Farm Arena. Those Heat fans seemed to get even louder as the hush of dejection settled over the Hawks fans in the 2nd half. The Heat defense proved to be too much and it’s clear that Jimmy Butler is the best player in this series, not Trae Young.

The proclamations and reports of Jimmy Butler’s demise in Miami were greatly exaggerated. All is well in Miami and Jimmy Butler is every bit the playoff assassin that we remember from the bubble! The national media has been slow and sometimes downright resistant to giving the Miami Heat their due, but now it feels like Jimmy and the Heat are slowly forcing everyone to take account of what we here in Heat nation have known all along: this team earned the #1 seed in the East and are a legit championship contender.

Now we wait. The Miami Heat pulled off the #1 seed in the East and did with 2 games to spare. This is an accomplishment that most prognosticators were not predicting to occur because they felt this team was too old and didn’t have enough quality depth to successfully navigate the protracted grind that is the NBA regular season. The Heat also finished tied for the 3rd best record in the entire NBA, but due to a tiebreaker of head-to-head losses to the Warriors, the Heat would likely not have homecourt advantage in the NBA Finals should they make it because the top 3 seeds in the West all had better seasons over Miami.