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    Miami Heat Prove Value of Patience, Even in NBA Finals Defeat

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    There was something novel and fun about the Heat as they pulled off upset after upset as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed.Jimmy Butler studied a box score. Max Strus pulled on a sweatshirt from Lewis University, the Division II school in Romeoville, Ill., that had offered him a scholarship when high-major programs passed on him. And as fireworks crackled outside, Udonis Haslem — a power forward and a staple of the Miami Heat for the past 20 seasons — reflected on the final game of his playing career.“Proud of these guys, proud of my team,” Haslem, 43, said. “I told the guys I have no complaints, no regrets. They gave me a final season that I’ll never forget, and that’s all I can ask for.”Inside the visiting locker room at Ball Arena on Monday night, there was sadness but also some joy. There was resignation mixed with no small amount of pride. But most of all, in the wake of the Heat’s 94-89 loss to the Denver Nuggets in Game 5 of the N.B.A. finals, there was the sense that Miami had lost the series to a superior opponent and a worthy league champion, and sometimes it really is that simple.“We would have liked to be able to climb the mountaintop and get that final win,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “But I think this is a team that a lot of people can relate to, if you ever felt that you were dismissed or were made to feel less than. We had a lot of people in our locker room that probably have had that, and there’s probably a lot of people out there that have felt that at some time or another.”The Heat couldn’t hold on to a slim lead in the fourth quarter of Game 5. They won one game in the series: Game 2 in Denver.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesSome of the story lines that accompanied the Heat on their deep playoff run may be irritatingly familiar by now. How nine of the players on their roster were undrafted. How they seemed to thrive on adversity. How Spoelstra flummoxed arguably more talented opponents with his zone defense. And how Butler and Bam Adebayo, the team’s two best players, filled their more unsung teammates with self-assurance.But there was also something novel and fun about how the Heat, as the Eastern Conference’s No. 8 seed, went about their business — pulling off upset after upset, surprise after surprise. They were just the second eighth seed to reach the N.B.A. finals.“I’m just grateful,” Butler said of being around his teammates. “I learned so much. They taught me so much. I wish I could have got it done for these guys because they definitely deserve it.”Most of all, perhaps, Miami’s playoff run was a testament to organizational stability, a concept that sounds about as bland as boiled potatoes. But the Heat — along with the Nuggets, who have stuck with their core and their coaching staff through a smorgasbord of ups and downs — have shown that being boring and exercising patience have value, that constant change is seldom the answer.Cheering the Heat in Game 3 of the N.B.A. finals in Miami.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressButler said he wished he could have won a championship for his teammates.Megan Briggs/Getty ImagesSpoelstra, who has been with the Heat since the mid-1990s, first as a video coordinator and later as an assistant, personifies that approach. He has been the team’s coach for 15 seasons, making him the second-longest-tenured coach behind San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich — no small feat when coaches in professional sports tend to be shuffled like playing cards. About a third of N.B.A. coaches were fired or quit in the 2022-23 season.And in an era in which some teams stockpile draft picks and strategize about the best way to land top-shelf prospects — this is less diplomatically known as “tanking” — the Heat have continued to prioritize developing their young players while striving to be competitive, even when it is hard and often unrewarding work.Spoelstra recalled training camp, which he described as hypercompetitive. At the time, the Heat were only a few months removed from a disappointing end to their 2021-22 season: a Game 7 loss to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals. The memory of that game seemed to fuel them.“We could barely get through those full-contact practices without everybody screaming at each other, yelling at the coaches that are officiating, arguing about the scores,” Spoelstra said.Erik Spoelstra has coached the Heat for 15 seasons.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConAnd then something odd happened: Miami spent months wrestling with mediocrity. The N.B.A. is not an easy business. The Heat lost seven of their first 11 games. In late December, they had won only half. By April, they were bound for the play-in bracket, and with the No. 7 seed in the East on the line, they lost to the Atlanta Hawks. Needing to defeat the Chicago Bulls to secure the conference’s final playoff spot, Miami trailed by as many as 6 points in the fourth quarter — and then won by 11.The entire process, though, proved important. Despite their struggles, the Heat ignored the lure of quick fixes. They did not flip their roster at the trade deadline. Instead, they kept at the daily grind while banking on the belief that they would find their rhythm, that they would get it right when it mattered, that they were becoming more resilient.“Nobody let go of the rope,” Adebayo said.If the Heat slipped into the playoffs as an afterthought, they crashed the party once they arrived. They needed just five games to eliminate the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round (leading Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bucks’ star forward, to offer his viral discourse on the definition of “failure”), then beat the fifth-seeded Knicks in six games. Miami proceeded to reach the N.B.A. finals by exacting a measure of revenge on the Celtics, walloping them in Game 7 of the conference finals — in Boston, no less.Miami Heat guard Kyle Lowry had 12 points, 9 rebounds and 4 assists in Game 5.Daniel Brenner for The New York TimesAs for facing a 3-1 series deficit to the Nuggets ahead of Monday’s game, some members of the Heat expressed as much confidence as ever.“We’ve been through so much adversity this season,” Adebayo said. “Who else would be in this situation?”Some of it could have come off as public posturing, except that the Heat seemed truly determined to extend the series. The Nuggets went 5 of 28 from 3-point range in Game 5, an effort that was due in part to the Heat’s aggressive defense. Butler, meanwhile, emerged from hibernation to go on a late-game scoring binge, and his two free throws gave Miami an 89-88 lead with 1 minute 58 seconds remaining.But the Heat went scoreless the rest of the way as the Nuggets seized their first championship behind Nikola Jokic, their do-everything center.“The last three or four minutes felt like a scene out of a movie,” Spoelstra said. “Two teams in the center of the ring throwing haymaker after haymaker, and it’s not necessarily shotmaking. It’s the efforts. Guys were staggering around because both teams were playing and competing so hard.”Spoelstra added that it was probably his team’s “most active defensive game” of the season.“And it still fell short,” he said.Udonis Haslem said he would retire after this season, his 20th with the Miami Heat.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesAfterward, Haslem said he was already thinking about next season and how the team’s returning players could build off their experience in the playoffs. He will not be among them.Haslem, who signed with the Heat in 2003 and won three championships with the team, is retiring. And while he played sparingly in recent seasons, he wielded outsize influence in the locker room. He also operated as a connective thread for the organization, as someone who understood pressure and hard work and the way things are done in Miami, from one season to the next — a phenomenon more commonly known as Heat Culture.Haslem pledged that he would still be around next season.“Somewhere close by,” he said. “Somewhere close by, I can promise you that.” More

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      The Miami Heat’s Secret Weapon for a Title? Zone Defense.

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      The odds are against the Heat in their N.B.A. finals matchup with the Denver Nuggets. But the maligned zone defense may be their secret weapon.One of the catchiest chants in the N.B.A. is an acknowledgment of one of the game’s most thankless tasks: “De-fense!” Clap. Clap. “De-fense!” It rained down this week as the Miami Heat coped with the nearly impossible challenge of slowing two of the league’s most fearsome players — the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray — during the N.B.A. finals in front of their home crowd.The most exalted defensive matchups in the N.B.A. are typically one-on-one clashes, as opposing stars come face to face. But that is hard work. Really hard. Maybe you can stop an explosive scorer like Jokic or Murray for a possession or two. But every time down the floor? For 48 minutes? With an undersized roster that has endured the long grind of the postseason?Good luck. For over 50 years, the N.B.A. refused to let teams do it any other way. It was man-to-man defense or bust. But now, teams can be more creative in how they go about trying to put the clamps on their opponents. And no team is more creative than the Heat, who play more zone defense — a scheme in which defenders guard areas of the court instead of individual players — than any other team in the league.On Wednesday in Game 3, that meant having two players trap Denver’s inbounds pass, two more at midcourt and one protecting the basket at the far end — a 2-2-1 zone press — early in the second quarter.The Nuggets are willing passers, making them harder to defend.Sam Navarro/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConBy the time the Nuggets managed to get the ball upcourt, just 14 seconds remained on the shot clock, and the Heat’s defense had morphed into a halfcourt zone — a 2-3 set, with two players up top at the perimeter and three along the baseline. Murray, the Nuggets’ point guard, missed a 3-point attempt from the left corner, and the Heat raced away for a game-tying bucket.Unfortunately for the Heat, that was about as good as it got for them in their 109-94 loss to the Nuggets, who took a 2-1 series lead ahead of Game 4 on Friday in Miami. Murray and Jokic both finished with triple-doubles for Denver, which, for one game, at least, was largely unfazed by Miami’s shape-shifting defense.“We didn’t offer much resistance,” said Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra, who bemoaned his team’s lack of effort but considered it an anomaly. He added: “I think the thing that we’ve proven over and over and over is we can win and find different ways to win.”And one of those ways is with their zone defense. There is a talent disparity in this series: The Nuggets have more of it thanks to their array of expert shooters and the all-around wizardry of Jokic, a two-time winner of the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award. So, in an effort to slow the pace of play and compensate for their lack of size, the Heat are occasionally abandoning their man-to-man defense by mixing in some zone.This is nothing new for them. Miami played zone on a league-high 19.7 percent of its defensive possessions during the regular season, according to Synergy Sports, a scouting and analytics service. The Portland Trail Blazers, who played zone 14.9 percent of the time, ranked second, and the Toronto Raptors (8.4 percent) were third.Jokic’s size makes him difficult to defend.Kyle Terada/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConMore important, the Heat — even amid the regular-season struggles that nearly kept them out of the playoffs — used their zone to great effect, limiting opponents to 0.937 points per possession. By comparison, opponents averaged 1.009 points per possession against their man-to-man defense.Miami is playing slightly less zone defense in the playoffs — zone has accounted for 15.7 percent of its defensive possessions ahead of Game 4 — but no other team has come close to using it that often. And the Heat have had some success with it, holding opponents to 0.916 points per possession versus 1.003 points per possession with man-to-man defense.“I think it’s effective,” Heat point guard Gabe Vincent said, “because it’s different.”Jim Boeheim, who recently retired after 47 seasons as the men’s basketball coach at Syracuse University, was so renowned for his 2-3 zone defense that he became synonymous with it. But in his early years at Syracuse, he actually coached more man-to-man defense.“We had a zone and we’d practice it, but not all the time,” Boeheim said. “But then we would be having trouble with somebody, and you’d put the zone out there, and they couldn’t score!”Most teams did not practice it, and they seldom faced it in games.“It can just screw somebody up,” Boeheim said. “And if your opponent is only going to one or two guys on offense, you can kind of cheat toward those one or two guys, and it can cause problems.”The zone remains a bit of a novelty in the N.B.A., which essentially banned it for the first 50-plus years of the league’s existence. Before the advent of the shot clock in 1954, the worry was that too many teams would pack the area around the basket with defenders and slow the game to a crawl at a time when the league was desperately trying to grow its audience.Later, critics considered the zone a gimmicky way for teams to camouflage poor individual defenders, especially as the league continued to glorify one-on-one matchups. The lowly zone was stigmatized. But over time, offenses stalled and scoring decreased as games devolved into a seemingly nonstop series of isolation sets, with players stationed on the weak side of the court to draw defenders away from the ball.Ahead of the 2001-2 season, the N.B.A. had seen enough and eliminated its illegal-defense rule, which meant that teams could play zone — or use any other type of defense that suited them. The twist was that the change was designed to spur spacing and passing on offense.The zone, though, remains fairly uncommon for several reasons. N.B.A. rosters are brimming with long-range shooters, and when passes zip from side to side, zone defenders are often too slow to react, leaving opposing players with open looks from 3-point range. Also, defenders are prohibited from camping out in the lane whenever they aren’t guarding an opposing player — otherwise known as the defensive three-second rule.“And that changes everything,” said Alex Popp, the head boys’ basketball coach for IMG Academy’s postgraduate team in Bradenton, Fla. “N.B.A. coaches are still reluctant to play zone because you can’t just stick a guy in the charge circle and protect the paint.”For the Heat, the zone has value. If it was initially born of necessity — as a way for Spoelstra to match up against bigger teams and hide some of his weaker defenders — it has become an asset. For long stretches of the Eastern Conference finals against the Celtics, Boston seemed flummoxed by Miami’s traps, and often settled for (errant) jump shots rather than attacking the rim.Now, whenever the Nuggets bring the ball upcourt, they must do a mental calculation: What sort of defense are they about to see? The zone adds an element of unpredictability.“I think it’s something that can work,” Boeheim said, “especially in short windows.”Miami’s Kyle Lowry guarded the Nuggets’ Bruce Brown man to man.Megan Briggs/Getty ImagesKyle Lowry, the Heat’s backup point guard, recently recalled a formative period of his childhood when his coaches taught him about the zone press, traps and the basic 2-3 formation. As he was asked about those experiences, he knew where the line of inquiry was headed.“If you’re getting into the question of our zone, it’s pretty cool,” Lowry said.OK, what makes it cool?“It works sometimes,” he said.Miami’s zone is not static. It changes from game to game and even from possession to possession, with dozens of permutations based on which opposing players are on the floor — or even Spoelstra’s whims.Bam Adebayo, the team’s starting center, said they drill the zone “to the point where we’re tired of it.”Spoelstra would rather walk on hot coals than discuss his schematic choices at the N.B.A. finals, but his players have acknowledged the zone’s amorphous nature.“Spo does a great job preparing us all year to be ready for situations like this, to be able to switch in a timeout, switch a scheme, switch a defense,” Heat guard Max Strus said before Game 3.For Game 4, Miami is likely to unveil a new scheme or a slightly different look. It may not matter — “I think Denver is too good,” Boeheim said — but the Heat have been in tough spots before. Their zone has helped. More

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      The Heat, a Long Shot in the Playoffs, Pull Even with Long Shots

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      Miami, usually outgunned by the Denver offense, made 17 3-pointers to even the N.B.A. Finals series at one game apiece.Michael Malone is generally the kind of coach who would leave a negative Yelp review after vacationing in Shangri-La. But his worry was warranted this time.On Saturday, the day before Game 2 of the N.B.A. finals, Malone lamented his team’s poor defense in the first game of the series against the Miami Heat. The Nuggets had given the Heat looks at a lot of wide-open 3-pointers — a bad sign, Malone said, even though good shooters like Max Strus and Duncan Robinson kept missing and Denver won the game.On Sunday, Strus and Robinson combined for six of Miami’s 17 3-pointers. On a night when the Heat mostly seemed outmatched, their 3-point shooting helped them steal a victory on the road to tie the series at one game apiece. Somewhat appropriately, they won by 3 points: 111-108.“There was miscommunication, game plan breakdowns, personnel breakdowns,” Malone groused afterward. He added: “We got lucky in Game 1. Tonight, they made them.”The Heat have frustrated all of their playoff opponents this year by making jump shots they had missed during the regular season. Most teams over the last decade have focused on generating points from the most efficient shots: 3-pointers, free throws and shots at the basket. Miami has followed that trend to an extent, but it was one of the worst 3-point shooting teams during the regular season and had been more likely to grind out points — led by Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo — by focusing more on midrange baskets.That’s likely a doomed strategy against Denver, an offensive juggernaut. The Heat cannot match the playmaking of Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon. For the Heat to win, they have to remain hot from 3-point range, just as they have been during the postseason.Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said shooting long balls gave his team its best chance against the Nuggets.Kyle Terada/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConOn Sunday, Miami Coach Erik Spoelstra said that the Heat had been “more intentional” in their offense, suggesting that the plan had been to lean into their 3-point shooting.“That doesn’t guarantee you anything either,” Spoelstra said. “But at least you give yourself the best chance.”The Heat have seized on their chances this postseason, shown by their unlikely run to the N.B.A. finals as a No. 8 seed. Kevin Love, who joined the Heat midseason, said he wasn’t aware of the team’s 3-point struggles until he came to Miami.“I always feel like there’s something to closing the door to the regular season,” Love said, adding: “You just kind of get to reset. And I think guys felt that. They just had another level of confidence and understanding that if we go out there and just be ourselves and play free and play fluid, we’ll give ourselves a chance to win.”During the regular season, Miami ranked third in shots taken between 10 and 14 feet from the basket, and 10th for shots between five and nine feet. That’s not to say the Heat didn’t shoot enough 3s: They were 10th in attempts per game. They just didn’t make them.In the second quarter on Sunday night, the Nuggets led by as many as 15. The game was on the verge of turning into a blowout. But Kevin Love, who hadn’t played in the last three games, hit a deep shot to keep the Nuggets within sight. Miami shot 8 for 17 from 3-point range in the first half — which helped the Heat stay within 6 points of Denver at halftime.Nikola Jokic’s 41 points and 11 rebounds weren’t enough to hold off the Heat.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressThe Heat continued to bomb 3’s and tied the game relatively early in the third quarter. Denver still led going into the fourth quarter, but the 3s helped the Heat keep the game within reach, allowing for a comeback.In the final frame, it was Robinson’s turn. His two 3s in the opening minutes cut the Nuggets’ lead to 2. Miami’s eventual victory was its seventh of this postseason run after being down by at least 10 points. It has matched the 2022 Golden State Warriors and the 2011 and 2012 Heat for the most double-digit comebacks in one postseason in the last 25 years.While the Heat do have some strong shooters, they do not include the team’s best players, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. In addition, guard Tyler Herro, one of the team’s best shooters, has missed almost the entire playoff run with a right hand injury.Miami’s offense often centers on Adebayo grabbing the ball at the elbow and using his passing skills, or Butler driving the baseline and using shot fakes and strength to create space for himself.In the playoffs, Miami flipped a switch. Suddenly, its 3-pointers have begun to fall at an elite clip. Entering Game 2, the Heat had been the best 3-point shooting team in the playoffs at 38.7 percent. In the Eastern Conference finals against the Boston Celtics, the Heat shot 43.4 percent from 3 over seven games.Asked if he had knew why the Heat suddenly improved their shooting, Cody Zeller, Miami’s reserve center, said he thought that the regular season “was inaccurate.”“The playoffs are more accurate as far as how good of a shooter our guys are,” Zeller said. “We haven’t been surprised by guys making shots in the playoffs. We’re more surprised by not making shots during the regular season.”The 3-pointer, which teams are more reliant on than ever, is a high variance shot. Offenses can create many open looks, but players are still shooting a ball into a circle that is 10 feet off the ground. You’re more likely to miss than make them. But if a team gets hot over a couple games, it doesn’t matter what the other team does defensively. The Celtics saw that and so did the Nuggets in Game 2.The Nuggets have more offensive weapons than the Heat. For the Heat to keep pace, the answer is to keep shooting more and more 3s.“In terms of the shooters, that’s pretty simple: Let it fly. Ignite. Once they see two go down, it could be three, it could turn into six just like that,” Spoelstra said Saturday, while snapping his fingers.“Let it fly. Ignite,” Spoelstra said after the game. Max Strus took his advice in Game 2, hitting four 3-pointers.Mark J. Terrill/Associated PressIn the regular season, the ideal tactic to defend the Heat was to focus on Butler and Adebayo and gum up the middle, forcing the ball to the perimeter. After all, during the regular season, the Heat shot 34.3 percent — a low-ish number — from 3 on shots considered open, according to the N.B.A.’s statistics. No N.B.A. defense can take away everything from an opposing offense.Strategies are generally to push teams toward what they’re not great at. The Celtics did just that, and Miami made them pay at a rate of 42.1 percent on open 3-pointers.The temptation when a team goes cold on its deep shots is to focus more on getting shots near the rim. In Game 2, the Heat rarely went to the rim, only shooting 10 times in the restricted area.Miami heads home with the series tied at one game each. Once again, the Heat won a playoff game they weren’t expected to win on shots they weren’t expected to make.“That’s what this game is,” Butler said. “Make or miss game. Make or miss league. We made some shots. They didn’t.” More

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      The Nuggets or Heat Will Get a Trophy. But Will Either Get Respect?

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      Both the Denver Nuggets and the Miami Heat believe they have been disrespected and are using that as motivation as they compete for a championship.The Denver Nuggets’ mascot, Rocky, an anthropomorphic mountain lion with a lightning bolt for a tail, dragged a pickax as he stormed around, trying to figure out where all the chatter was coming from. He needed to quiet the voices. They were disrespecting his team.For weeks, the Nuggets had dominated the N.B.A. playoffs. And for weeks, they thought, no one in the news media had given them their due. Not when they beat Minnesota and Phoenix in the first two rounds. Not when they swept the Lakers in the Western Conference finals.Now Rocky was ready to avenge them — metaphorically, at least — in a video the Nuggets played during a break in Game 1 of the N.B.A. finals on Thursday night.In an audio montage of slights from pundits, Nuggets Coach Michael Malone lamented the national sports coverage during the conference finals. “And all everybody talked about was the Lakers!” he said just before Rocky found a television in a room and smashed it with his pickax. He kept smashing items until the video showed a framed picture of an unidentifiable Lakers player lying shattered on the ground.Denver’s finals opponent, the Miami Heat, didn’t fare much better at the start of the championship round on Thursday. The Nuggets led by as many as 24 points and won, 104-93. They entered the series as heavy favorites, an unfamiliar position.Nuggets guard Jamal Murray was averaging a career-best 27.7 points per game in the playoffs entering Game 1 of the N.B.A. finals.Jack Dempsey/Associated Press“Even when we win, they talk about the other team,” Nuggets guard Jamal Murray said. He added, “It fuels us a little more and will be sweeter when we win the chip.”Neither the Nuggets, the West’s top seed, nor the Heat, the East’s eighth seed, feel that their abilities have been fully respected this postseason, and both teams have used that as motivation. Turning perceived disrespect into fuel is a common technique in sports, even when the slights are only imagined, or perhaps even deserved.Michael Jordan made disrespect a theme of his speech when he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009, bringing up a time when he was cut from the varsity team at his high school. Later in his career, Jordan invented a moment of disrespect from an opponent named LaBradford Smith, who he said taunted him after scoring 37 points in a game for Washington against Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in March 1993. Intent on humiliating Smith, Jordan scored 47 points against Washington the next night.The Hall of Fame center Shaquille O’Neal would often tell a story about the Spurs great David Robinson snubbing him for an autograph when O’Neal was young. He said that snub motivated him in his playing career, but later admitted it never happened.“David, I want to say I apologize for making up that rumor,” O’Neal said during an N.B.A. video conference in May 2020, nine years after O’Neal had retired. Robinson, who was on the call, burst out laughing.While Jordan and O’Neal concocted tales of offense, the Miami Heat saw a disregard that was real.Miami slipped into the postseason, which is why few expected them to make the run that they did. They lost their first game in the play-in tournament before winning the sudden-death second game to get into the playoffs as the eighth seed.Few people expected the Miami Heat to make it to the N.B.A. finals even with Jimmy Butler, right, a six-time All-Star, on the team.Isaiah J. Downing/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConDuring the Eastern Conference finals, when Miami faced the second-seeded Boston Celtics, Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra took issue with the news media coverage his team received during the regular season.“I guess nobody is really paying attention,” Spoelstra said, when asked why the team kept believing in itself even when it struggled. He added: “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.”The Heat beat the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs, and upset the Celtics in the conference finals, taking the decisive Game 7 on the road in Boston.Even during that series, they showed why people had doubts. They raced out to a 3-0 series lead against Boston, which led to the Celtics treating themselves like underdogs. But then the Heat dropped three straight games as they turned the ball over and struggled offensively — what you might expect from an eighth seed against an experienced team like the Celtics, who went to the N.B.A. finals last season.On the other hand, the Nuggets have held steady in their strengths — the all-around play of Nikola Jokic, who has won the Most Valuable Player Award twice; the dynamic scoring and passing of Murray; the fluid offense and hustle from role players like Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. They’ve been the best team in the West since December.But even then, as Malone and Murray said, they felt much of the attention from the news media and basketball fans had been devoted to, well, everyone else. Like the Lakers.Therein lay another example of the pervasiveness of using perceived disrespect as motivation: The Lakers did it, too. Lakers Coach Darvin Ham often reminded his team that few believed they could make the playoffs early in the season. He left out that the lack of belief in their ability was based not on bias, but on performance. The Lakers started the season 2-10 and played consistently better only after overhauling the roster in January and February.The motivational technique worked all the way until they met the Nuggets in the conference finals.Denver’s Nikola Jokic had a triple-double in Game 1, with 27 points, 10 rebounds and 14 assists.Jack Dempsey/Associated PressThe Heat have undergone an even sharper turnaround. Their best player, Jimmy Butler, has become known for elevating his play in the postseason, and round by round they have defied expectations to get to the finals.It’s perhaps why the Nuggets aren’t giving the Heat the opportunity to feel disrespected by them.“Who said that we are favorites?” Jokic said on Wednesday. “The media?”He was told that Las Vegas betting odds counted the Nuggets as favorites.“I think we are not the favorite,” Jokic said, having become more comfortable as the underdog. “I think in the finals there is no favorites. This is going to be the hardest game of our life, and we know that.”Mostly, it was not the hardest game of their lives. The Nuggets had a 24-point lead in the third quarter and used their size advantage to disorient the Heat.But as the Nuggets expected, Miami fought back. The Heat cut the Nuggets’ lead to 9 points with 2:34 left in the game. Miami used a mixture of defensive techniques that have helped them to comeback wins at other points in the postseason just when their opponents felt safe to discount them.“We knew they were going to do that,” Murray said. “That’s how they play and that’s how they win games, is just be relentless in that sense.”Often fueled by disrespect themselves, the Nuggets understood the perils of disrespecting an opponent. More

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      Boston Celtics Force Game 7 Against Miami Heat With Buzzer-Beater

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      The Heat let a 3-0 series lead slip away in the Eastern Conference finals with sloppy play, bad shooting and disappearing acts by their stars.After the miracle and the madness, Gabe Vincent broke the silence inside the Miami Heat locker room on Saturday night by humming along to “Life Goes On,” a ballad by Ed Sheeran featuring Luke Combs.Most of Vincent’s teammates were long gone by then, bound for their Miami-area homes as they faced the collective challenge of figuring out how to rebound from a soul-crushing loss to the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.DERRICK WHITE SENDS THE EAST FINALS BACK TO BOSTON FOR GAME 7!HE WINS IT FOR THE CELTICS AT THE BUZZER 🚨#TissotBuzzerBeater | #TimingEmotions pic.twitter.com/ybUb5CT6l1— NBA (@NBA) May 28, 2023
      But back in the locker room, where an oversize image of the N.B.A.’s Larry O’Brien championship trophy is stitched into the carpet and a series of murals depicting the franchise’s past triumphs line a tunnel leading to the court, the atmosphere was gloomy. The lyrics of a song about heartbreak hardly helped. They seeped from Vincent’s iPhone all tinny and hollow, as if the music were being piped through a radiator:It hit like a train, I ran out of words;I got nothing to say, everything hurts.“Great song,” Vincent said.Nothing about this season has been easy for the Heat, and Vincent hinted that perhaps some poetic justice was at work after the Celtics’ 104-103 victory in Game 6, tying the series at three games apiece. Derrick White’s astonishing putback at the buzzer — the ball left his fingertips with about one-tenth of a second to spare — had extended the best-of-seven series and the Celtics’ season, forcing a Game 7 in Boston on Monday night.The Heat could not have been closer to securing a spot in the N.B.A. finals against the Denver Nuggets. And then, in an instant, that dream somehow felt very far away.“It’s almost like it’s supposed to be this way,” Vincent said. “But, you know, go to Boston and get a win.”Butler scored 15 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter of Game 6.Mike Ehrmann/Getty ImagesVincent, the team’s starting point guard, made it sound simple, but this series has been a carnival ride. The Heat won the first three games to put themselves on the cusp of history as they attempted to become just the second No. 8 seed to advance to the N.B.A. finals, joining the 1998-99 Knicks. Now, the Celtics are bidding to become the first team to win an N.B.A. playoff series after trailing by three games to none.“This is one hell of a series,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “At this time right now, I don’t know how we are going to get this done, but we are going up there to get it done.”It was a public vote of confidence after a game full of missed opportunities for the Heat. Where to begin? Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, their two best players, combined to shoot 9 of 37 from the field.Butler, in particular, looked downright passive for much of the game. There he was in the second quarter, handling the ball at the top of the perimeter with the shot clock winding down. But instead of driving, Butler shoved a pass to Duncan Robinson, who had little choice but to hoist a runner from 11 feet that grazed the front of the rim. A few seconds later, the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum was at the other end for a layup.But other plays could haunt the Heat, too. In the fourth quarter, for example, Adebayo grabbed the rim blocking a shot, which was against the rules and led to a 4-point possession for the Celtics.As a team, the Heat shot 35.5 percent from the field. They missed hook shots and layups, jumpers and floaters. They still had a chance thanks to Caleb Martin, who slid into the starting lineup and scored 21 points, and Butler, who asserted himself late and was fouled attempting a 3-pointer with 3 seconds remaining. He made all three free throws for a 1-point lead.Miami’s Bam Adebayo made just four shots in Game 6. During the regular season, he was the team’s second-leading scorer.Sam Navarro/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConBut all that was prologue to the final sequence — a 3-point attempt by the Celtics’ Marcus Smart that rimmed in and out, and White’s putback. The Heat’s Max Strus had been hedging on Tatum, preventing him from getting the ball, but that left White with an open lane to the basket for the follow.“I thought we had a lot of things covered on that play,” Spoelstra said, “and sometimes things just don’t break your way. I don’t think there’s any regrets on that. It’s just a shame.”Butler, who scored 15 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter, shouldered the blame.“If I play better, we’re not even in this position,” he said. “And I will be better. That’s what makes me smile, because those guys follow my lead. So when I’m playing better, I think we’re playing better as a whole.”After finishing the regular season with a 44-38 record, the Heat landed in the play-in tournament and lost their opening game to the Atlanta Hawks. The Heat then trailed the Chicago Bulls by as many as 6 points in the fourth quarter of an elimination game before they went on a game-winning run to narrowly slip into the playoffs.But something odd was beginning to percolate inside the Heat: The greater the challenge, the better they played. Facing the top-seeded Bucks in the first round, Miami lost two rotation players, Tyler Herro and Victor Oladipo, to long-term injuries, which should have been problematic. But Butler was brilliant as the Heat advanced in five games.But that version of Butler has been missing as the Heat’s three-game series lead has slipped away. He has been passing up shots, hesitating on drives and turning the ball over. In other words, he looks tired from the grind of a long season.Now, Miami is facing its greatest test yet. Butler said he planned to decompress by playing a late-night game of Spades.“I’m not going to let our guys quit,” he said. “I don’t care what nobody says. Everything going to be OK.”Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum hugs guard Derrick White after White’s tip-in at the buzzer won Game 6 against the Heat.Sam Navarro/USA Today Sports Via Reuters ConFor the Celtics, the No. 2 seed, Game 7 is one more chance for them to salvage their season and make good on their pledge to return to the N.B.A. finals, one year after losing to the Golden State Warriors. Tatum has been inconsistent, even in victory, routinely going scoreless for long stretches with his season in jeopardy every night. He scored just 6 of his 31 points in the second half of Saturday’s game.“We’re all aware it’s not time to celebrate,” Tatum said. “We didn’t accomplish anything.”It was approaching midnight when Butler called guard Kyle Lowry to his locker for a quiet chat. Vincent had vacated the premises, taking his moody music with him.At the front of the room, a monitor had exactly one item listed on the team’s schedule for Sunday: a 1:30 p.m. flight to Boston. More

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      Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat Have the Boston Celtics on the Ropes

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      Butler has shaped the Miami Heat in his no-quit, self-assured image, which is bad news for a reeling Boston team that is one loss from elimination in the Eastern Conference finals.MIAMI — For much of Game 3 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference finals on Sunday, Jimmy Butler did something he does not often do: He played a supporting role. He created off the dribble, zipped passes to his Heat teammates for open shots and pushed to score only when the opportunity made too much sense not to seize it.Butler could have easily tried to take over against the reeling Boston Celtics. But he has shaped the Heat in his no-quit, self-assured image, and empowered their cast of unsung players to lead. Then, shortly before halftime on Sunday, as if anyone needed to be reminded of his presence, Butler dribbled the ball upcourt and went straight at the Celtics’ Grant Williams, his latest nemesis, for a jumper off the glass.After drawing a foul on the shot for good measure, Butler fell to his back and stayed there for longer than was necessary — just so he could point at Williams and make it clear that he had made him look foolish, again.“In all the moments of truth,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said, “Jimmy is going to put his will on the game.”Another game, another clinic given by Miami, whose 128-102 victory on Sunday was an end-to-end drubbing. The Heat, who have a 3-0 series lead, will go for the sweep at home on Tuesday, driven by their increasingly credible championship dreams as an eighth seed.The Celtics looked lost in Game 3 as they fell behind the Heat by as many as 33 points.Megan Briggs/Getty ImagesThe Celtics’ Jaylen Brown called the Game 3 loss “embarrassing.” Boston Coach Joe Mazzulla took the blame. “I just didn’t have them ready to play,” he said.All things considered, it was a muted performance by Butler, who finished with 16 points, 8 rebounds and 6 assists. But for the first time in the series, he faced traps. Both he and Bam Adebayo found teammates who were willing to help. Gabe Vincent scored 29 points, and Duncan Robinson finished with 22.“Jimmy and Bam are fueling that,” Spoelstra said. “They are just infusing those guys with confidence.”It would be easy to describe Butler as a showman, as someone who turns the court into a stage. He is not an impassive person. He emotes. He interacts with opposing players. He sings to himself. And he seems to delight in those moments (plural) when a crowded arena awaits his next act.Make no mistake: There is a theatrical element to his approach, especially in the playoffs. It was on full display in Game 2 on Friday, after Williams connected on a 3-pointer to build on Boston’s narrow lead midway through the fourth quarter. Williams began jawing with Butler on his way back up the court. On the ensuing possession, Butler scored on Williams and drew a foul. Afterward, Butler and Williams knocked foreheads as they continued their — how to put this delicately? — conversation.“l like that,” Butler said. “I’m all for that. It makes me key in a lot more. It pushes that will that I have to win a lot more. It makes me smile. When people talk to me, I’m like, OK, I know I’m a decent player if you want to talk to me out of everybody that you can talk to.”Butler and Boston’s Grant Williams had a fiery exchange during Game 2 on Friday. Adam Glanzman/Getty ImagesFor Williams, talking to Butler was a miscalculation. The Heat closed that game with a 24-9 run. After the win, Butler strode to his news conference crooning along to “Somebody’s Problem,” a song by the country artist Morgan Wallen, which Butler was playing on his iPhone.“It’s a hit in the locker room right now,” said Butler, who described himself as the team D.J. “So I get to pick and choose what we listen to.”The thing about Butler, though, is that all his extracurriculars — and all the attention that he draws to himself, whether intentional or not — are a means to an end. They motivate him, push him to perform. He is not brash for the sake of being brash. He is brash because being brash helps him win.“He loves to win,” said Mike Marquis, who was his coach at Tyler Junior College, a two-year school about 100 miles southeast of Dallas. “Some people hate to lose. He absolutely loves to win. I think sometimes there’s a negative connotation with hating to lose, with bad sportsmanship and all that. But when I coached him, he didn’t have any of that — he just loved to win.”Butler, who had a difficult childhood, was not highly recruited coming out of Tomball High School in Texas. He had a scholarship offer from Centenary, a small college in Louisiana that has since transitioned to Division III, and a partial offer from Quinnipiac. But Tyler, Butler said, was where he felt wanted.Joe Fulce, a teammate of his at Tyler and later at Marquette, recalled that Butler had an uncanny ability to “curate his own world” whenever he played basketball. Outside the gym, there were problems and challenges. Inside the gym, the many distractions of his daily life somehow ceased to exist.“That’s hard as hell to do,” Fulce said. “It’s almost like he was a magician.”Butler amped up the crowd during Game 3.Megan Briggs/Getty ImagesMarquis caught another glimpse of that single-minded focus when the N.B.A. concluded its 2019-20 season inside a spectator-free bubble at Walt Disney World because of the coronavirus pandemic. While other players were going stir crazy, Butler thrived in that sort of insulated environment, hauling the fifth-seeded Heat to the N.B.A. finals before they lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in six games.Today, Butler is one of the league’s most recognizable players and a global pitchman for a low-calorie beer. But he still finds a way to close himself off from the world around him whenever he plays basketball, and he is not all that dissimilar to many of his teammates who were overlooked until they found success in Miami. The Heat have nine undrafted players on their roster, including Vincent and Robinson.Butler went to junior college. He was the final pick of the first round of the 2011 N.B.A. draft. Even this season, he was not selected as an All-Star (which, in hindsight, was probably an oversight). The veteran guard Kyle Lowry has said Butler is one of the most unselfish stars he has played with.“He is us, and we are him,” Spoelstra told reporters earlier in the postseason, as a way of explaining the synergy between Butler and the team around him. “Sometimes, the psychotic meets the psychotic.”Together, they are one win from the N.B.A. finals. More

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      The Miami Heat’s Undrafted Players Are Their Secret Weapon

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      The Miami Heat have nine undrafted players — more than any other N.B.A. team. “When you’re in that position,” one player said, “you’re willing to do anything.”BOSTON — Max Strus had spent two seasons punishing defenders as a shooting guard at Lewis University, a Division II school in Romeoville, Ill., before he delivered some news to his coach that was not entirely unexpected: He wanted to transfer to a major Division I program.For the coach, Scott Trost, it was bittersweet. He was sad to see Strus go, but he also knew that Strus was ready for his next challenge.“And who’s to say if he would be where he is today if he didn’t make that move?” Trost said.On Wednesday night, seven years after he transferred to DePaul and nearly four years after he matriculated to the N.B.A. G League as an undrafted free agent, Strus was sinking 3-pointers and making defensive stops for the Miami Heat in their 123-116 victory over the Celtics in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals.But perhaps the oddest part about his unlikely presence was that it was not odd at all — at least not for the Heat, who have a league-high nine undrafted players on their 17-man roster. On Wednesday, three of those players — Strus, Gabe Vincent and Caleb Martin — scored 15 points each while combining to shoot 16 of 27 from the field.“I think it’s something unique that we’ve all gone through,” said Vincent, the team’s starting point guard, “and we know how difficult it can be. So we just try to motivate each other and keep each other going.”Miami Heat guard Max Strus, left, has gone from a two-way player to one of the Heat’s best 3-point shooters.Charles Krupa/Associated PressThe conference finals have coincided with pre-draft buzz of the highest (and tallest) order. On Tuesday, as N.B.A. hopefuls began to cycle through Chicago for the league’s scouting combine, the San Antonio Spurs landed the No. 1 pick in the draft, set for June 22 at Barclays Center.Barring a cosmic catastrophe, the Spurs will select Victor Wembanyama, a 7-foot-4 teenager from France and the most celebrated prospect since LeBron James. A gifted player who has size and skill, along with an innate feel for the game — yes, he really did tip-dunk his own 3-point miss earlier this season — Wembanyama could be a transformational force for the Spurs.But beyond Wembanyama and the rest of this year’s picks, teams have another roster-building option at their disposal: plumbing the pool of the undrafted, a strategy that has proved increasingly viable as basketball continues to expand its global reach and more talent rises to the surface.“When you’re in that position, you’re willing to do anything,” said Martin, who was an all-conference player at Nevada but went undrafted in 2019. “And I think more teams are starting to appreciate that.”Consider that 126 undrafted players, representing about a quarter of the league, found their way onto N.B.A. rosters this season. But no team leaned on the overshadowed, the snubbed and the slighted more than the Heat did, with undrafted players scoring a league-high 33.8 percent of the team’s points during the regular season, according to N.B.A. Advanced Stats. The Nets ranked second in that category, with undrafted players accounting for 24 percent of the team’s points.Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra noted that two of his best players — Bam Adebayo and Tyler Herro, who has been sidelined with a broken hand since the first round — were high first-round picks. Forward Jimmy Butler, who was brilliant on Wednesday, collecting 35 points, 7 assists and 6 steals, joined the team in a sign-and-trade with the Philadelphia 76ers in 2019. But he was a late first-round pick, by Chicago, in 2011. In other words, the Heat like name-brand stars, too.Some teams, like Oklahoma City and San Antonio, have stockpiled draft picks through trades, but the Heat have not. Instead, Spoelstra said, the team has needed to be creative about how to fill out its roster. Many of Miami’s undrafted players have come up through its G League affiliate, the Sioux Falls Skyforce. Spoelstra said players in the G League or from overseas are often just as talented as some N.B.A. reserves.“It’s all about timing and fit, and what a player’s fortitude is,” he said, adding: “If you have a big dream and want to be challenged, we feel like this can be the place for a lot of those kinds of guys.”Miami Heat forward Udonis Haslem, center, rarely plays now, in his 20th season, but he unleashed a vintage performance on April 9 with 24 points. He’s retiring after the playoffs.Lynne Sladky/Associated PressAnd if Spoelstra needs any help gauging (or enhancing) that fortitude, he can turn to Udonis Haslem, a power forward who went undrafted in 2002, spent his first professional season in France and joined the Heat the following year. Now 42, Haslem has been with Miami ever since.“I think organizations are doing a better job of doing their homework and not just assuming, because a guy didn’t get drafted, that he can’t help you win,” Haslem said. “You can’t measure character or discipline or accountability at the draft combine, and a lot of those things sometimes get overlooked.”Haslem has played sparingly in recent seasons, but he has outsize influence in the locker room, including as the self-appointed dean of the undrafted. Those who are new to the team get a one-on-one conversation with Haslem, who tells them about his three championship rings and about how anything is possible. But they had better be prepared to work, because Haslem will be watching.“I take it personally when an undrafted guy comes here,” he said. “I want them to be successful because I feel like that’s a piece of my legacy.”His legacy now includes the likes of Vincent, who tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee as a junior at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was early in his rehab when Joe Pasternack was hired as the team’s new coach.“The first call I got,” Pasternack said, “was from Gabe Vincent saying: ‘Coach, tell me what you need me to do. Do you need me to call the players? Set up a team meeting?’ That left an impression.”Vincent was back in uniform for the start of his senior season. But after averaging just 12.4 points a game, he landed in the G League with the Stockton Kings. A few weeks into Vincent’s first season there, Pasternack had an opening for a full-time assistant and offered him the job. Pasternack believed in Vincent as a player, but he also knew he was grinding away without any guarantees.Miami Heat guard Gabe Vincent hurt his knee in college and went undrafted.Bob Dechiara/USA Today Sports Via Reuters Con“I just saw so many kids in the G League not going anywhere,” Pasternack said. “But I also thought he was such an unbelievable leader that he’d be a great assistant coach.”Vincent politely declined the offer.“I was sort of like ‘Joe, what are you talking about?’” Vincent recalled, laughing. “I don’t know why he keeps telling that story, and I’ve told him that: ‘Joe, this does not make you look good!’”Vincent signed a two-way deal with the Heat during the 2019-20 season and slowly began to work his way into the rotation. He averaged a career-high 9.4 points a game this season. He is due for a significant payday this summer as an unrestricted free agent.Strus thought he could someday make a living playing basketball in Europe. That was the goal when he was at Lewis University. It was not until his second day on campus after transferring to DePaul that his mind-set changed. Dave Leitao, who was then the team’s coach, told him that he could have a future in the N.B.A.“It was huge,” Strus said. “I’d never been told that in my life.”As a first-year pro during the 2019-20 season, Strus was cut by the Celtics and then tore his left A.C.L. in a game with the G League’s Windy City Bulls. He signed a two-way deal with the Heat the following season. On Wednesday, he grabbed the game’s final rebound.“I’ve taken advantage of every opportunity they’ve given me here,” he said. More

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      Knicks Absorb First Blow in Throwback Battle With Miami Heat

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      Losing Game 1 at home was a setback for the Knicks, but it’s not a reason to count them out. They still have their depth and defense.The Knicks walked off the court at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon with their shoulders slumped. The energy that gripped the arena at the start of the game against Miami had dissolved into a mélange of people shuffling out, Heat fans boasting and a few Knicks fans shouting insults, mostly at the game officials and the Heat fans.Perspective is difficult to have in a moment like this.“I was horrific,” said Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson, who scored 25 points but missed all seven of his 3-point attempts.On Sunday, the Knicks lost to the Heat, 108-101, in Game 1 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference semifinals. They lost even though the Heat star Jimmy Butler didn’t have the kind of scoring explosion he used to knock off the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the playoffs.But despite the dour mood that engulfed the Garden after the game, it would be unwise to bury the Knicks for their performance. In some ways, everything the Knicks are doing in the playoffs is a bonus. Perhaps more important, there is still time for them to survive this series.“I don’t think anyone thought this game was going to be, or the series was going to be, won or lost in the first game,” Knicks guard Josh Hart said. He added later: “I don’t think there’s an opportunity that we let slip away. It’s going to be a tough, physical series and every game’s different.”Neither the Heat nor the Knicks were expected to last very long in the playoffs.RJ Barrett, center, led the Knicks with 26 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists.John Minchillo/Associated PressThe Knicks finished the regular season as the fifth seed in the East, facing a Cleveland Cavaliers team that had traded for the star the Knicks wouldn’t — Donovan Mitchell.The Heat faced even longer odds as the eighth seed against a Bucks team expected to compete for the championship and led by Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is a finalist for this year’s Most Valuable Player Award.Instead, the Heat and the Knicks easily dispatched their first-round opponents, each needing just five games to do it. Miami benefited from an injury to Antetokounmpo and the dynamism of Butler. Butler scored 56 points in Miami’s Game 4 win against the Bucks and 42 in the series-clinching win two days later.That meant containing Butler would be critical for the Knicks, a team driven by its defense and depth.The Knicks had home-court advantage and a tactical advantage in that Coach Tom Thibodeau knows Butler well. He coached Butler with the Chicago Bulls for Butler’s first four seasons in the N.B.A., and again when Butler played for the Minnesota Timberwolves.On Sunday, Butler had 25 points, 11 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals. More critically, the attention he commanded on the court made things easier for his teammates, many of whom have thrived under playoff pressure before.The Knicks’ shooting was also particularly damaging for them. Brunson wasn’t the only one who struggled from 3. Overall, the Knicks made only 20.6 percent of their 3-pointers, including just 3 of 16 in the first half.With 5 minutes 5 seconds remaining, Butler struggled to rise from the court after turning his ankle while tangling with Hart. He refused to leave the game. With Butler hobbled, the Heat relied on guard Kyle Lowry and extended their lead to 11 points from 3.“That certainly is inspiring that he would not come out of the game,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said. “And to be able to finish the game just infused a bunch of confidence to the rest of the guys that we have to finish this off.”Historically, when the Heat and Knicks have played each other in the playoffs, the battles have more closely resembled boxing matches than basketball games. Their physicality was legendary in the 1990s, with the Knicks’ Patrick Ewing and Miami’s Alonzo Mourning, both of whom were at Sunday’s game, going at each other in the paint.Sunday’s game was higher scoring than those contests from a quarter-century ago, but was similarly physical.“I wouldn’t just assume that each game is going to look like this,” Spoelstra said. “We’ve played these guys four times during the regular season. Two of the games were in the mud like this, the throwback Heat and Knicks that you would expect. And then we had two shootouts.”But he also said he expected the series to be a “cagefight.”What the Knicks have done already this postseason is cause for optimism for their future.They were not supposed to make a deep playoff run this year even with Brunson, who was a finalist for the league’s Most Improved Player Award. The Knicks are widely considered to be one superstar away from being championship contenders. If they win this series and get to the conference finals, they will have surpassed most expectations.They have avoided the kind of ridiculous drama that characterized the decade-long desert they wandered through until creating a stable environment with Thibodeau at the helm.The Knicks beat the Cavaliers soundly, justifying their unwillingness to gut their roster in order to trade for Mitchell.Their depth propelled them against Cleveland. It is why they have often succeeded even when playing short-handed.On Sunday, they were playing without Julius Randle, who is out with a sprained ankle. Thibodeau refused to use that as an excuse for why they lost the game.“We have more than enough,” he said after the game.The Heat were also missing a key player — guard Tyler Herro, who broke his hand during the first round and is expected to be out for several weeks.Butler did not address reporters after the game, and Spoelstra said he didn’t know the status of Butler’s injury. But if it is serious, it could change the complexion of the series. Still, the Knicks saw what the Heat did in the first round against the Bucks and know how difficult they can be.“They’re never going to give up,” Knicks forward RJ Barrett said. “That’s one thing I personally enjoy about this series. It’s going to be hard-fought. It’s going to be tough. You’ve got to go out there and kind of take it.” More

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      Boston Celtics Provide the Drama. Miami Heat Deliver the Win.

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      A strange playoff series keeps getting weirder with injury scares and furious comebacks. It’s difficult to tell who is best prepared to adapt.BOSTON — On the first possession of the game, Miami Heat point guard Kyle Lowry made a statement.He snatched a rebound off a Boston Celtics miss and sped the ball up the court before finding Max Strus for an open 3-pointer.Thus began an avalanche against a typically stolid Celtics defense. Miami’s dominant first quarter on Saturday provided enough cushion to withstand Boston’s furious comeback and emotional in-game returns from Celtics players who had appeared to be seriously injured. But it was the return of two Heat stars that made possible Miami’s 109-103 win in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.The first star was Lowry, who has been absent for most of the playoffs because of a hamstring injury. The other was Bam Adebayo, who has only seemingly been absent from the series. Adebayo’s 16 points in the first half matched his combined total in Games 1 and 2. He finished Game 3 with 31 points, 10 rebounds and 6 assists. Miami leads the series, 2-1.“In the previous game, as everyone knows, they beat us like we stole something,” Adebayo said of Miami’s 25-point loss in Game 2. “That should wake anybody up.”This has been an undoubtedly strange series. In 12 quarters, the Heat have outscored the Celtics only twice, yet they lead the series overall, two games to one. Those two quarters have been series-defining. The first was in the third quarter of Game 1, when the Heat outscored the Celtics, 39-14. The other was in Saturday night’s opening frame, when the Heat jumped out to a 39-18 lead. The matchup has mostly featured wild swings and stretches of uncharacteristically poor defense from two teams who typically count that as a strength.Miami’s Bam Adebayo came alive for the first time this series with 16 first-half points in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.Michael Dwyer/Associated Press“The margin for error on either side is so small that you’ve just got to stay the course through all the emotions and the ups and downs,” Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said.The Heat had a new strategy for Game 3: Move faster.Miami continuously pounded the Celtics defense in the first half by pushing the ball. That put the Celtics on their heels without time to adjust. In the case of Adebayo, sometimes that meant receiving a pass in the half-court, then immediately sprinting up the court and going to the basket against the slower Al Horford.“I’ve seen Bam play like that a lot, but tonight was special,” Strus said. “Just because of all the noise and all the criticism that he’s been getting, for him to step up like that was huge.”In the case of Lowry, pushing the ball meant receiving an inbounds pass after a Celtics basket and throwing it up the court to a streaking Jimmy Butler for a wide-open layup.But it wasn’t just fast breaks: When Adebayo received the ball in the post, he would immediately pivot into the paint, rather than hold the ball and wait for the defense to respond. That was not how the Heat were accustomed to playing: During the regular season, they were near the bottom of the league in pace.The Heat led by as many as 26 points in the first half. They entered halftime up by 15.The Heat forced 23 turnovers, which helped them push for fast breaks. The Celtics’ ballhandlers couldn’t find space to dribble because the Heat defense was so adept at stripping the ball. Boston’s Jaylen Brown, one of the better slashing guards in the N.B.A., repeatedly lost the ball to Victor Oladipo, who had four steals off the bench. Lowry and Adebayo also had four steals each.“We made it too easy on them in that regard,” Celtics Coach Ime Udoka said. “Obviously, getting stops or scoring the basketball, they can’t get out and run to that extent, but scoring 33 points on our 24 turnovers is hard to overcome.”Brown, who had seven turnovers, put at least some of the blame on officiating, despite Boston having 30 free throws to Miami’s 14.“They let a lot of stuff go tonight, especially when I feel like I drive and I get to the basket. I feel like it’s two hands on me all the time,” Brown said. “I never get those hand-checking calls.”The Heat even spoiled what would have been a dramatic story arc for the Celtics. In the third quarter, Marcus Smart, the Celtics guard who won the Defensive Player of the Year Award, left the game after appearing to sustain a gruesome right leg injury on a rebound attempt. He crashed to the floor, writhing in pain, and was helped off the floor and into the locker room.Within minutes, he re-emerged from the tunnel to deafening roars from the Celtics crowd and checked into the game. He immediately hit a corner 3-pointer to cut the Heat deficit to 10. Then came another dramatic moment in the fourth quarter, when Boston’s best player, Jayson Tatum, also collapsed to the ground, holding his right shoulder. Like Smart, he had to be helped off the floor. But he, too, re-emerged moments later.Boston’s Marcus Smart seemed to seriously injure his leg in the second half, but he was soon back in the game.Bob Dechiara/USA Today Sports, via ReutersBoston’s Jayson Tatum left for the locker room with an apparent shoulder injury, but, like Smart, he soon returned.Michael Dwyer/Associated PressThe Celtics seemed primed for a storybook comeback. They ferociously attacked the basket, while an arena full of fans in green T-shirts shouted themselves hoarse. Brown’s 3-pointer with 2 minutes 40 seconds left cut the Heat lead to 1 in a game Boston had never led. All the makings were there for a Hollywood movie, almost assuredly starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.A rescue plan for Miami came in the form of Strus, the undrafted third-year guard, who has taken minutes from the higher-profile guards Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro. He answered Brown’s jumper with a 3-pointer of his own, deflating the Celtics crowd. Lowry, putting a period on his game-opening statement, provided the assist for the stat sheet and a separate one in the huddle.“In the timeout, Kyle said, let’s run a pin-down for Max,” Strus said. “Let’s get him open. So when he said that, I had all the confidence in the world to step up and make a shot.”Health will be a defining factor going forward in the series. Butler missed the second half of Game 3 because of knee inflammation. The Celtics were missing Robert Williams III, their starting center, because of knee swelling. He is considered day-to-day. Udoka said after the game that Smart had rolled his ankle and Tatum had a shoulder stinger.“I’m assuming they’ll be OK,” Udoka said.Lowry was a pest on defense, with heady play on offense and a calming influence, resembling the player he’d been when he won a championship in 2019 with the Toronto Raptors. He finished with 11 points, 6 assists and 4 steals. It wasn’t always pretty, but it worked. He said he felt “fine” after the game, despite struggling to find a rhythm.“No matter what happens, at the end of the day, if you put your heart out there and play hard, you’ve got to be happy and just live with the results, and that’s what we do,” Lowry said. More