Things are about to get very, very real for the Miami Heat.
How real? In the span of 48 hours, they’ve gone from commanding to staggering. From bullying to retreating. From 3-0 to must-win.
It’s kind of obvious at this point but needs to be said anyway: Miami better wrap up the Eastern Conference finals at home Saturday, because the likely next step if it doesn’t is the kind of NBA history that will not age well on its résumé.
Are we really looking at these maddening, brilliant, inconsistent Boston Celtics as the first NBA team to erase a 3-0 deficit in a playoff series? At this point, it seems like a coin flip.
Given where the Celtics were a few days ago, they’ll take it. Given where the Heat were when they seemingly had a trip to the NBA Finals wrapped up, Saturday may be the most pressure-packed day any of them have faced on a basketball court.
And after a 110-97 Boston domination in Game 5, we shouldn’t be too surprised it has come down to this.
For all the criticism the Celtics and coach Joe Mazzulla took over the first three games — most of it deserved — the fundamental truth of the series did not change. The Celtics are the much better team.
That would admittedly seem strange to say about a team that was down 0-3 in a playoff series. Superior teams can lose, but rarely do they lose three in a row. But Boston, for a variety of reasons, wasn’t playing its best basketball. Miami, on the other hand, was in a ridiculous groove throughout the playoffs. And against the Celtics in particular, the Heat were shooting an outlandish percentage from the 3-point line and getting a level of performance from guys like Gabe Vincent and Caleb Martin that was not consistent with their work in the regular season.
The Celtics were 57-25 in the regular season; Miami was 44-38. Neither record was an accident, and water usually finds its level in the end. The only question was whether Boston would have enough time, energy and willpower to find its best self.
Consider that version of the Celtics found in Game 5. They played with extreme, unrelenting energy from the opening tip. They splashed threes — 7-for-12 in an absurdly one-sided first quarter, 16-for-39 for the game — and continued shooting without hesitation. They were all over the offensive glass and forced the Heat into turnovers because of their physicality and anticipation.
Jayson Tatum was getting easy offense, the way he tends to do. Jaylen Brown finally looked like Jaylen Brown, which meant he had his best game on both ends of the floor in quite some time. It was brutally simple and yet has been strangely elusive for this team.
Maybe it won’t last. Consistency hasn’t really been Boston’s thing in these playoffs.
But at this point, the Celtics should be able to detect the scent of an opponent that has played way above its head for weeks and is now crashing back to earth. The meal is on the plate; they just have to pick up their fork and eat it.
It’s kind of strange and probably dangerous to be here discussing something that has never happened before in the NBA playoffs as if we already see the result on the horizon. But there has literally never been a 3-0 series like this one.
Most teams on the verge of being swept are in that position because they’re just not as good as their opponent. And once that becomes apparent to everyone, they typically submit. At best, pride and their opponents’ lack of interest might help them salvage a game before the inevitable end.
This series, though, had different underlying fundamentals.
For one thing, there had never been a situation in the NBA playoffs where a team that finished 13 games behind its opponent in the regular season was up 3-0. And there were some pretty big outliers attached to that lead. For instance, Martin was averaging nearly 20 points in the series compared to 9.6 in the regular season and was 14-of-25 from 3-point range through the first half of Game 4. For the season, he was 36 percent on a mere 3.3 attempts per game.
Those kinds of anomalies, along with Jimmy Butler’s epic heater, explain how a Miami team that finished 25th in offensive rating during the regular season was third in the playoffs.
It was certainly possible Boston, having been embarrassed to the point of giving up in Game 3, could have let go of the rope in Game 4. But it didn’t. And ever since the Celtics came out in the third quarter of that game determined to land at least one punch in this series, everything has looked a lot more difficult for the Heat.
The looks aren’t as clean. There’s hesitation in the ball movement. There’s a touch less confidence in attacking the rim. More specifically, it has finally looked like a 2 seed vs. an 8 seed.
The Celtics still have to go prove it. By letting the first three games slip, they frittered away any margin for error. Their season comes down to winning one more on the road, which typically isn’t easy at this stage of the playoffs. Maybe they just won’t do it because one game of basketball at this level is unpredictable and often decided on small margins.
But the stage is now set for a series turnaround like we’ve never seen. And suddenly all the pressure is on Miami to make sure it’s not the first team to suffer such an epic playoff collapse.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken
