The 2023 NBA Playoffs have seen some major upsets, many of them courtesy of the Miami Heat. The Heat had an up-and-down regular season which led to them being in the NBA Play-In Tournament. After losing to the Atlanta Hawks in the first game, they defeated the Chicago Bulls to earn the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference.
Despite being underdogs every step of the way, Miami has steamrolled all of its opponents. After eliminating the No. 1 seed Milwaukee Bucks in five games and No. 5 seed New York Knicks in six, the Heat are on the brink of eliminating the No. 2 seed Boston Celtics.
In the Eastern Conference Finals rubber match against Boston, Miami is close to delivering the knockout blow. They are up 3-0 after a thorough dismantling on Sunday night, moving one step closer to another NBA Finals appearance.
“That was a solid, mature, professional approach,” said Spoelstra, now on the brink of a sixth trip to the NBA Finals as Miami’s coach. “There’s a lot of pent-up stuff here and we’re getting closer, but we still have to finish this off.”
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Miami picked up a dominant 128-102 victory as Boston waived the white flag heading into the fourth quarter. One of the driving forces behind the blowout victory was Gabe Vincent. He scored a career-high 29 points, going 11-of-14 from the field overall and 6-of-9 from deep.
“It’s the first to four games,” Vincent said. “We’re not satisfied with three.”
The next leading scorers on the team were Duncan Robinson and Caleb Martin off the bench. Robinson nailed five 3-pointer en route to 22 points while Martin connected on four and scored 18. The Celtics, on the other hand, made only 11 3-pointers on 42 attempts.
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That 26.2 percent from 3-point range isn’t going to cut it, especially when the Heat are living up to their name and are on fire, making 54.3 percent of their 3-point attempts going 19-of-35. That was one of the things that left Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla searching for answers during his post-game presser.
“I just didn’t have them ready to play,” said Mazzulla, who has been the subject of tons of criticism in this series — and will surely face more going into Tuesday. “Whatever it was, whether it was the starting lineup or an adjustment, I have to get them in a better place, ready to play. That’s on me.”
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Mazzulla isn’t the first head coach to fail to keep up with Erik Spoelstra and likely won’t be the last. Every button that Spoelstra has pushed has worked for Miami while Mazzulla hasn’t been able to figure anything out for Boston.
“We’ll decompress tomorrow,” Spoelstra said, “but we’ll really get our minds right to finish this thing off.”
The Heat will look to finish things off in Miami in Game 4 on Tuesday night. The Heat are 6-0 thus far this postseason at home, so the odds are certainly in their favor as they look to sweep the Celtics and advance to the NBA Finals for the first time since the 2020 Orlando Bubble.
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