"Derek White, my God, he was like a bolt of lightning, out of nowhere," Jaylen Brown said in a press conference after Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals when talking about teammate White's basket killing, his emotions were still quite strong, and his words and behaviors revealed the joy of the rest of his life, "It's White, it's him who saved our day." ”
Jaylen Brown put it too mildly, Derek White may not only save this day for the Celtics, he saved the Green Army's ups and downs of this season, and saved this group of players as a collective dream to attack the championship again. If it weren't for Whitewhite's brilliant rush, Jaylen Brown, Jason Tatum and all the other Celtics players would have packed their bags and checked their tickets for a vacation from Miami to the Bahamas.
Similarly, it was precisely because of this 0.1-second extreme basket that the fate of the two teams was completely reversed in an instant.
The Heat are amazing enough, and in the 2023 playoff journey without a major general, this team has shown extraordinary resilience from start to finish: not only does every undrafted pick on this team have the tenacious vitality of wild shoots, but as a team, they are simply the face of indomitable will.
By this time in the series, neither side had any secrets to speak of, and the options for both coaches to come to G6 were similar: shrink the rotation and fight bayonets.
The Celtics took Brogdon, who had an elbow injury and lost his form, while the Heat removed Kevin Love, who was weakened and weakened. But compared to the Celtics' seven-man rotation and everyone is a first-round pick, the Heat roster pulled out one card after another, all of which were stamped with the label of "undrafted".
Dare to use the draft loss, make good use of the draft, this has long become a major signature of the Heat in recent years, this season the Heat team of 17 roster, starting from the veteran Haslem, a total of 9 players have not been selected by anyone in the draft, the proportion is more than 50% of the team. And even more amazing than this player composition is the G6 game - in the face of the Celtics' pressing offensive, it is not Butler and Adebayo who methodically fight back for the Heat, but this batch of undrafted drafters.
Gabi Vincent, who returned from a sprained ankle, shot 3-of-3 three-pointers at one point; Max Strus, once abandoned by the Celts, continues to shoot his arrows of vengeance; And the most amazing thing in this series is Kaleb Martin, the 2019 draft loser who literally played like a superstar.
Caleb entered the NBA with his twin brother Cody Martin, who was selected by the Hornets in the second round of the 2019 draft, but Caleb was left unattended and signed by the Hornets after losing the draft. But after two seasons together, Cody was left behind by the Hornets and Caleb was waived — an outcome that wasn't surprising when he shot 24.8 percent from three-point range in the 20-21 season, but it also meant the first time in his life that he had to leave his twin brother to fight alone. But if the Hornets can't look at Kaleib, which team can be his destination?
Luckily, the NBA also has a team that likes to use the draft pick. The person who helped Caleb get through to the Heat tryout turned out to be rap superstar J. Cole. The singer, affectionately known to Chinese fans as "Chicken Button," loves basketball and as a North Carolina native who often hangs around the Hornets, he met the Martin brothers. When he heard that Kaleb Martin had nowhere to go, Chicken Buckle called Heat assistant Caron Butler.
As a result, the Heat have a player who averaged 18.2 points per game in the Eastern Conference Finals while shooting 58.3 percent from the field.
In G6, the Heat's most outstanding draft pick was Martin, who scored 12 points on 5-of-6 shooting in the first quarter, scoring 21 points and a career-high 15 rebounds. He and several other draft losers persevered to help the Heat wait for a turnaround in a very passive game: Jimmy Butler, who woke up in the final moments of the game.
Needless to say, Butler was poor for most of the game, his feints could not fool the Celtic players, and he could not point his opponent off the ground by constantly shaking, but instead made Butler's shots more and more passive and awkward, and he only hit 3 of his first 19 shots.
But with 4 minutes and 10 seconds left in the game, Celtics coach Joe Mazura suddenly decided to call a timeout, perhaps Mazzura meant to stabilize the army and let the Celtics players breathe, but the effect was to make the exhausted Butler suddenly slow down: as the first fault in total points in key moments of the 2023 NBA playoffs, Butler began to attack.
He first made consecutive kills and walked to the free throw line to find a touch, then suddenly hit a cold arrow from outside the three-point line, and then hit a "2+1" against veteran Horford, Butler had scored nine consecutive points to change the score to 100-101 with 53 seconds left in the game.
Then, there were the dramatic 3 free throws - in the second reading moment of the game, Butler experienced a series of missed catches, fouls, opponents challenged and failed to change the decision, and the game time returned to the table of rapid changes, referee Zak Saba finally confirmed: 3 seconds left in the game, Butler executed 3 free throws, and Butler really relied on these 3 free throws to take the Heat step by step from trailing to equalizing, and then from levelizing to overtake. In less than 4 minutes, Butler scored 13 points.
The coffin board that the Celtics had already kicked open was about to be nailed again, and Butler and his Heat were on the verge of making history.
They beat the Bucks 4-1 earlier to create the sixth Black Eight miracle in NBA history, but most of the "Black Eight" teams were like shooting stars, losing their luster after a shining series, and only the New York Knicks won more than one series in 1999. In that shrinking season, the Knicks became the biggest chaos maker, and after the core of the team, Patrick Ewing, was injured halfway, they were still able to beat the East and became the only team in history to reach the Finals as the "Black Eight".
The 2023 Heat are almost about to repeat such a miracle, and even their achievements are more terrifying than the original Knicks. Because in 1999, the league's three teams with the highest winning percentages were all in the West, and this season it was the opposite. From record to staffing, the Bucks and Celtics have always been regarded as the two strongest teams in the league, but the Heat once scored 7-1 against these two teams in the playoffs, although the Green Army fought back in G4 and G5, but after Butler's heart-stopping 3 free throws, the Celtics are about to be completely buried.
This is the Heat, as a team with little talent, they can pull all the other elements of basketball: such as willpower, before G6, they have won three times in this playoffs when they were 10 points behind in the final quarter; For example, execution, after the 4 minutes and 10 seconds timeout, the Heat began to swing the defense, while Butler scored consecutive points, they also did not let the Celtics score a single sports goal in 4 minutes; There is also basketball IQ, the Heat fully read the tactical intentions of the Green Army in the final 3 seconds, and the Celtics could only send the ball to Smart in a hurry, and he could complete a rather reluctant shot.
The moment the ball was thrown, Miami home fans began to cheer when they saw the slightly skewed trajectory of the ball, for the upcoming victory, for the city of Miami to return to the finals after 9 years, and for them to have such a proud team.
But all those cheers came to an abrupt end with Derek White coming out of the diagonal stab, "The ball came at me, so I made it in." White lamented his luck. You always need a bit of luck to complete an all-time lore, and since Michael Jordan hit the famous "The Shot" in 1989, this is the only time someone in the NBA has been able to hit the whistle on the edge of a series of knockouts. But NBA fans have no time to care about these trivial records, and in the competitive world of winning and losing, one second you are thinking of a hymn to the Heat, the next you have to prepare the words for the Celtics' miracle journey.
As you know, the Celtics have tied the series with 3-0 down, taking the East final into a 7-and-die match. The current Green Army has only one goal, that is, to become the first team in NBA history to "let three chase four", from 0-3 to 4-3, in the previous 150 teams have fallen behind 0-3, of which 92 teams were directly swept, 44 lost 1-4, that is to say, 90% of the teams that fell behind 0-3 will not survive 5 games, and there is only a 2% chance of forcing the series into seven games: the Knicks in 1951, the Nuggets in 1994 and the Blazers in 2003. But they also didn't survive.
The Celtics are the first team in history to get seven chances at home, and in that sense, they're the closest they've come to success.
Miami has their proud memories, but in the history of North American professional sports, Boston is a city of wonders. Before the Celtics, their city brother, the Boston Red Sox from MLB, had completed the only 3-0 comeback in baseball history in 2004, and the opponent was the Red Sox's centennial rival, the New York Yankees. Under the frequent baseball schedule, the Red Sox won four consecutive home and away games in 4 days, not only completing the miracle of a turnaround that no one has ever repeated, but even breaking the 86-year-old "Babe Ruth curse".
Babe Ruth, known as the "God of Baseball", was sold to the New York Yankees by the team after helping the Red Sox win the championship in 1918, and after being mistaken for a traitor by fans, Babe Rooss swore that leaving Boston was not his will, and that only the mercenary owners should be held responsible, and he cursed the Red Sox for never winning a championship again. The "god of baseball" became a saying, and the Red Sox did not win the championship for the next 86 years, until the big comeback from 0-3 down unsealed the old powerhouse. To this day, that series is regarded as an unsurpassed benchmark in the history of North American professional sports, not only because of the ups and downs of the score, but also because the story mixed in it is too legendary.
After 19 years, another Boston team was on the verge of miracles, and when the Celtics were 3-0 down, Jaylen Brown and Smart spoke as team representatives and said, "Don't let us win a game." The implication is that if the Heat give the Green Army this opportunity, don't blame them for being unpolite and will launch a major counteroffensive.
Friends who listened to these statements as jokes at the time now have to face the same thing: the already stronger Celtics, returning home to grab seven, they are naturally the more active side.
Because of Brogdon's injury, the Celtics essentially only have seven people left in the rotation: Smart, White, Brown, Tatum, Grant Williams, Robert Williams, Horford, which happened to be the seven-man rotation they had with the Heat a year ago.
This Celtic team is by no means perfect, and even in terms of their strength, they are a team prone to short circuits, make mistakes and relax. Otherwise, they would not have fallen 3-0 down, nor would they have been overturned by the Heat after leading by 10 points at the end. Just as Tatum, who scored 25 points in the first half of the G6, scored only 6 points on 1-of-10 shooting in the second half.
But it's still a strong and resilient team, having faced a lose-and-knock knockout in the playoffs five times this season, but they've won all five of them, and the Celtics have escaped time and time again with the opponent holding the game point. As for the occasion of the G7 decider, it is already the fourth time that the Celtics' seven-man rotation team has met in nearly six series in two years, the previous three are the 2022 Eastern Conference semifinals against the Bucks, the 2022 Eastern Conference finals against the Heat, and the 2023 Eastern Conference semifinals against the 76ers.
As a result, we are about to usher in not only the Celtics' fourth "seven-for-seven" in two years, but also the first time in 24 years that two identical teams have been robbing sevens in a row. After a full year, on the same Eastern Conference finals, on the same dates, on the same occasions of the same life and death battle, the same Celtics and Heat teams, the winner will also receive the same reward as last year - advance to the Finals and win a chance to continue to compete for the championship trophy. The only difference from this time last year was that the venue was changed from Miami to Boston.
Few NBA games can be like the upcoming battle, and a lot of history has been written before it even starts, and regardless of victory or defeat, it is bound to achieve an even more spectacular miracle in NBA history.
For such a game, perhaps we can only use the words of Heat coach Eric Spoelstra a year ago:
"There are no two words that would be more wonderful than this word."
That is, "grab seven".