Celtics/Heat Isn’t the Series We Need But It’s The Series We Deserve
Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the best bad basketball we have, by far
If you are a basketball fan, or honestly even if you aren’t, I would highly recommend tuning into the Celtics/Heat Eastern Conference Finals. Not because you will see good basketball, because you won’t. If you want to see good, beautiful basketball, watch the Warriors continue their evisceration of the Mavericks in the Western Conference Finals (or, more likely, pray for a competitive NBA Finals). But you should watch Celtics/Heat because this is some of the best bad basketball I’ve ever seen.
Boston Celtics
Let’s start with the Celtics. By any measure, the Celtics are the better team in this series. Advanced analytics consistently rate them as the best team this season, and they have been the analytics community darlings ever since their dramatic turnaround in early January. Both FiveThirtyEight and TheRinger’s NBA Odds Machine have consistently rated the Celtics their Finals favorite since the beginning of the playoffs.
That analysis holds true at the player level as well. By FiveThirtyEight’s Offensive/Defensive +-, the Celtics have the best player in the series, and 6 out of the top 10 best players:
- Jayson Tatum (5.3) — Boston
2. Jimmy Butler (5.0) — Miami
3. Derrick White (3.6) — Boston
4. Marcus Smart (3.1) — Boston
5. Kyle Lowry (3.1) — Miami
6. Al Horford (3.0) — Boston
7. Jaylen Brown (2.7) — Boston
8. Bam Adebayo (2.6) — Miami
9. Robert Williams III (2.0) — Boston
10. PJ Tucker (1.5) — Miami
Like all advanced metrics, these ratings are certainly flawed, and I’m not going to argue that these are gospel (is Kyle Lowry really more valuable than Jaylen Brown this series? Is Derrick White somehow better than Bam Adebayo? Seems highly doubtful). But overall these metrics tell the story of a Celtics team that is top to bottom just a little bit better than a very good Miami team.
Prefer more conventional analysis? Boston has the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in Marcus Smart, battle-hardened veterans Al Horford and Derrick White, scrappy young role players Robert Williams III and Grant Williams and a perfectly built #2 scorer in Jaylen Brown. Oh, and an absolute superstar in Jayson Tatum.
This has all been solidified by one of the scariest defenses in recent memory, which Zach Lowe called the best defense he’s ever seen, and helmed by a coach in Ime Udoka who was arguably Coach of the Year.
This Celtics team has been really, really good. And in the postseason they’ve mostly kept up the momentum! In the first round they absolutely trucked Kevin Durant, Kyrie Iriving and the Brooklyn Nets. They came out alive after an absolute war of a 7 round series against the Milwaukee Bucks, led by the most dominant player on the planet in Giannis Antetokounmpo.
With all that being said, you’d expect the Celtics to roll through the Heat. And in some ways, that’s what’s happened! The Celtics are +28 in this series over four games, and have tied or outscored the Heat in 13 out of 16 quarters. Overall, the Celtics have just been better than the Heat — a little bit more athletic, a little bit better shooting, a little better defense. When the Celtics are cooking there’s just not much the Heat can do to stop them.
With that in mind, you might expect this series to be already over, or maybe 3–1 Celtics, with the Heat barely clinging on and hoping for a miracle comeback. That is not what has happened.
The Leprechaun’s Curse
Instead, the series currently sits at a 2–2 split. How did this happen? Well, the Celtics have tied or outscored the Heat in 13 out of 16 quarters. But in 2 of the quarters they lost, they lost by 25 points (Game 1) and 21 points (Game 3). That is an absolutely massive swing! The Celtics spotted one of the best teams in basketball a 20+ point lead. Twice! You can’t do that in the Eastern Conference Finals!
What happened? Well, one thing that the advanced metrics do not capture is that this Celtics team is always one missed 3, one stupid turnover or one blown foul call away from a full on meltdown. Sometimes the meltdown is very specific, as everyone wearing green decides to start throwing the ball out of bounds, into a Miami player or straight into a TV camera. CelticsBlog has the details, but essentially, during Game 3 the Celtics either chucked the ball directly to the Heat or had it swiped out of their hands an astounding 23 times.
As good as the Celtics are, there are times when they forget they have to hold onto the basketball in order to put the ball in the basket. And if you gift a team as tough as Miami the ball 20+ times, they are going to run you off the court.
In some ways, the turnover problem is less annoying than the times when the Celtics simply forget how to play basketball. Watch below as the Celtics manage to turn an 8 point lead into a 17 point deficit in just 12 minutes, with highlights such as “Jayson Tatum takes a three early in the shot clock and misses by miles” and “everyone stands around as Jaylen Brown drives directly into four Heat players and chucks up a prayer.”
This isn’t new to the Celtics this postseason either. Against the Bucks the Celtics collapsed a couple of times, most notably completely melting down on their home floor in Game 5:
Of course, the Celtics were able to come back from this, and dethrone the reigning world champion Milwaukee Bucks after spotting them a 3–2 lead. This Celtics team gets a lot of praise and positive coverage for their “resilience,” and in fairness they have shown a lot of toughness — the team is 5–0 after a loss. But a lot of that resilience is necessary because the Celtics insist on imploding at the worst possible times! Does it still count as resilience if the tough times are almost entirely self-inflicted? I don’t know, and I can’t tell if I love or hate this team at this point.
So are this Celtics team a potential championship team with iron will, or are they a collection of braindead frauds perpetually on the verge of collapse? Hilariously, the answer is probably both. Can the Miami Heat take advantage? They haven’t really, yet — let’s get into why!
Miami Heat
With the Celtics constantly on the verge of a psychic breakdown, you might think the Heat have the edge. After all, the Heat are full on #heatculture psychopaths, who live and die the most deranged version of basketball that Pat Riley’s fever dreams can imagine. Noted crazy person Jimmy Butler, evicted from first Chicago, then Minneapolis, then Philadelphia for being too much of an asshole, has found a home in South Beach that welcomes his particular brand of insanity.
Earlier this season, Butler got into a full on fight with hall of fame coach Erik Spoelstra and Miami legend Udonis Haslem, and the whole incident was just treated as an example of #heatculture. These guys are honestly and truly nuts.
These are not players who shy away from the moment, or are afraid of anything. No team in the league is more mentally tough than the Heat, or more ready to go to war over anything. If there’s one team that’s capable of putting the psychically vulnerable Celtics into a vise, it’s the Heat. That’s exactly what the Heat did to the Celtics in the bubble in 2020 — the more talented Celtics were slowly squeezed down by the relentless Heat, who beat them 4–2 in the Eastern Conference Finals.
The only problem — the 2022 Heat are maybe not that good at basketball.
Live from the MASH unit
Let me clarify slightly — Jimmy Butler is incredible at basketball, and he has been on an absolute tear this postseason.
The problem is everyone else on this team. Star point guard Kyle Lowry and dynamite sixth man Tyler Herro are both injured (hamstring and groin, respectively), and they have been severely limited so far this series. Both Lowry and Herro have had their moments, but they are far from their peak versions as star offensive creators.
Luckily, the Heat have another All-Star on their team in Bam Adebayo! Unluckily, Bam has picked the worst possible time to disappear from the series. While his defense has been good, Bam’s offense has been practically nonexistent. Outside of a monstrous Game 3, Bam has been a total nonfactor, swallowed up by the length of the Celtics (with Timelord a particularly tough matchup).
With Lowry and Herro limited, and Bam struggling, the Heat have looked to supplement Jimmy Butler with a bunch of absolute randos. Max Strus, Gabe Vincent and Caleb Martin have played major minutes for the Heat, and while they’ve been okay, they all have major limitations at this point in their careers.
Strus can’t reliably stay on the floor on defense, and Martin and Vincent are far too inconsistent on offense. The Miami Bench Mob played well in wins over Atlanta and Philadelphia, but the Hawks are bad and the Sixers are insane and broken — the Celtics are a different test altogether. When they’re not having a meltdown, the Celtics have made repeated hay out of poaching off Martin/Vincent, and going after Strus on defense. Victor Oladipo and PJ Tucker have been solid, but overall there just isn’t a ton of firepower on this Heat team.
That’s just on the eye test — on the advanced statistics side, the numbers the suggest that this Heat team is good but not great, largely due to their lack of depth behind Butler. Their current rating on FiveThirtyEight puts them behind not just the Celtics, but also the Bucks (checks out), Nets (woof) and Suns (lol). As cohesive and tough as the Heat are, they just might not have enough juice to take advantage of even a discombobulated and frazzled Celtics team.
Mind vs Body
So the real question is — which will win? The mental problems of the Celtics or the physical problems of the Heat?
The pivot point of this series, hilariously, might come down to the two oldest players in the series. For the Celtics, Al Horford is often the last vestige of sanity in a thoroughly unbalanced team.
When Tatum and Brown are careening out of control, a rage-filled Smart is gnawing off his own leg and the Williamses somehow concuss themselves out of sheer excitement, Horford is the calm Zen Master with his qi in line. As this team spirals into psychic despair, look for him to establish order and ground everyone again with a clutch three-pointer, shutdown defense or even a thunderous dunk on the best player in the world.
Whenever things are spiraling out of control for the Celtics, look for the oldest and only calm head on the floor to try and maintain some level of sanity.
On the other side of the floor, PJ Tucker is insistent on playing high level basketball even though his body is clearly telling him to hang up his jersey.
The 37 year old veteran already won a ring last year with the Bucks, and after 9 years of incredibly physical basketball where the 6'5" forward somehow made a name for himself guarding players like Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James and Kevin Durant, it is very clear that his body is starting to turn to dust. After nursing a calf injury for weeks, in this series alone PJ Tucker missed time in Game 1 due to a non-contact foot injury, and missed Game 2 due to a knee contusion. He doesn’t need to prove anything, and at this point he probably should retire just for his own safety.
Instead, dragging his mangled carcass up and down the floor, PJ Tucker incinerated the Celtics in a thorough Game 3 beatdown. And he did all this while shoving Jayson Tatum into a locker.
Even if he is playing on literally one leg, look for PJ Tucker to throw his decaying corpse onto the floor for a swiping steal that somehow turns into a fast break corner 3 on the other end.
Predictions
This is normally the part where I glibly note that I am rooting for the Boston team (which I most definitely am), and I predict a massive Boston victory (which I am definitely hoping for). But honestly, this series has been so weird that I truly have no idea what to expect. Either team is capable of collapsing so vividly that no lead is safe over the next couple games.
It is entirely possible that Boston melts down completely, flailing desperately as they collapse under a hail of bricked 3s, stupid turnovers and pointless whining to the refs. It is also plausible that Miami drowns under the weight of their collective mediocrity, forced to watch Caleb Martin’s shots clank off iron and watch Max Strus get dunked on over and over again until even Jimmy Butler’s heroics aren’t enough. Or maybe both teams will collapse! Only one team can advance, but which team will collapse less, or in a less embarrassing fashion?
Hilariously, the team that eats the least shit this round could somehow end up holding the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy. Yes, it’s true, the Warriors look like the real thing, and it’s quite possible Steph Curry and Co. slaughter whichever bedraggled team fails their way into the Finals.
But at the same time, the Celtics have more firepower top to bottom than the Warriors, and the Heat have more intense, all-in chemistry. Either team could truly win the whole thing! They just need to stop failing so bad first.
Let’s see if either team can avoid losing! Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals is at 8:30 pm ET on Wednesday — come for the basketball, stay for the meltdown(s)!
Goddamnit Jayson,
Jefferson