BOSTON — From now on, let’s forget about the whole No. 8 seed business. Toss it out. Consider it an unfortunate typo discovered in the NBA playoffs bracket or an arbitrary digit there for window dressing.
On Friday night, Miami made another mockery of the East bracket, picking apart the second-seeded Boston Celtics for a 111-105 win. An eighth seed is approaching the doorstep of the NBA Finals as it reminds everyone that, yes, numbers do lie. That number assigned to the Heat does not reflect the way this team should be viewed.
“I don’t think we’ve ever considered ourselves an eight seed,” said Heat forward Caleb Martin, who poured in 25 points off the bench. “Obviously we put ourselves in that position through the regular season, but we always knew what we were capable of as a team. We have always had confidence in each other and great chemistry throughout the team. So we just knew we had to get here and, once we got here, things would play out in our favor.”
As for the favorites, the Celtics folded when it mattered. Resembling their worst selves from last year’s run to the championship round, the Celtics are still prone to costly, late turnovers, and they still operate in panicked sets — if they try to run anything at all. Jayson Tatum missed his three field goal attempts in the fourth quarter. Jaylen Brown misfired on four of five shots, and as Boston tried to protect its vanishing lead, he committed a traveling turnover. Despite the experience the Celtics gained from going six games with the Golden State Warriors in the 2022 Finals, this is their second consecutive series in which they’ve fallen into a serious hole.
“Just effort,” center Robert Williams III said. “Playing the right way the whole game, honestly, in my opinion. And trusting each other. We got to gain that trust and keep that trust throughout the whole game.”
The Heat has not shown those same limitations in this series. Miami’s players have a grown-up vibe about them — even in the morning, when someone chooses the Isley Brothers and then Teddy Pendergrass as background music while they get shots up. “Close the Door” might not be the typical pregame, get-hype tune for most NBA teams. For the Heat, however, it’s a slow jam that soothes, then provides subliminal instruction to put the Celtics to bed. Between the two teams, Miami looks like the veteran side ready to play in June.
“We know what we’re capable of. We’re going to be in this thing until the end together — good, bad, indifferent,” said Jimmy Butler, who played all but seven minutes of Game 2 and scored 27 points. “We are who we are … and we are going to continue to fight together.”
And so moving forward, those numbers in front of the team names — eight and two — should be reimagined.
Eight could very well represent Miami’s aggression level. Boston’s registers at a measly two. Or eight could stand for the number of points Heat center Bam Adebayo scored in the fourth quarter Friday — as well as the number of rebounds he grabbed in the final frame.
As Miami made its comeback, Adebayo showed little respect for Al Horford’s ability to defend him one-on-one, taking him into the paint and drawing two foul shots that trimmed Boston’s lead to 100-98 with 3:33 remaining. Then, inside the final minute, Adebayo cleaned up a missed shot by Butler with a putback dunk. A skilled yet powerful big man, Adebayo finished one assist shy of a triple-double with 22 points, 17 rebounds and nine assists.
Also eight: the number of memes “Mad Jimmy” created any time Boston backup Grant Williams attempted to challenge him.
Martin bestowed that latest nickname on his teammate, inspired by a testy fourth-quarter exchange between Butler and Williams. Though postgame Butler expressed admiration for Williams, who logged a surprising 26 minutes after collecting a DNP in Game 1, he showed nothing but disdain after scoring over him, which led to a confrontation in which the two shouted at each other, forehead to forehead.
“That’s just competition at its finest. He hit a big shot, started talking to me. I like that. I’m all for that. It makes me key in a lot more,” Butler said. “It makes me smile. It does. When people talk to me, I’m like, ‘Okay, I know I’m a decent player — if you want to talk to me, out of everybody that you can talk to.’ But it’s just competition. I do respect him, though. He’s a big part of what they try to do. He switches. He can shoot the ball. I just don’t know if I’m the best person to talk to.”
When their foreheads touched, Boston led 96-87 with 6:22 to play. The Heat closed the game on a 24-9 run. Never talk to “Mad Jimmy.”
“I knew that you could kind of see it in his eyes that he was ready to go after that,” Martin said. “He leads; we follow. He makes it easy on all of us.”
Now, strictly for the record, this sentence has to be written: The eighth-seeded Heat took a 2-0 lead in the conference finals. Beginning Sunday, when the series moves to Miami for Games 3 and 4, the Heat will have a chance to do the improbable and sweep the second-seeded Celtics. It’s improbable because this Miami roster needed to survive the play-in tournament just to secure the final spot in the postseason. That experience, as well as a rocky regular season, must have created this eighth-seeded monster.
“Feels like this has just been our existence all year long. I guess nobody is really paying attention,” Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “Every single game, it felt like for weeks on end, every game was ending on the last-second shot, whether we’re shooting it or the other team is shooting it. So you develop some grit from that. Whether that turns into confidence or not, sometimes you don’t have the confidence. But at least you have that experience of going through stuff and you understand how tough it is.”