Boston Celtics-Miami Heat, an unprecedented match

Era the match. Not so much because he was giving away the NBA Finals against Denver, but for the allure of the insurmountable. In sports slang, Americans call it reverse sweep: Literally reverse sweep, i.e. winning a series after losing the maximum number of games before elimination. Best-of-three happens, best-of-five makes news, best-of-seven becomes statistical exceptionalism. It’s rare in hockey (4 hits of 204), it’s unique in baseball (one in 38 years with this format), it’s absent in basketball. And even forcing the contest to match 7, starting from 0-3, is something that remains in the annals: there are only three teams out of 151, about 3 percent of the cases. The fourth, in these playoffs, were the Boston Celtics. And by beating Miami last night, Tatum and company could have become the first to complete the feat.

The ingredients were all there: the Celtics were the big favorites at the starting line, with all the inertia on their side. And above all, match point would be played at home. But what everyone expected – bookmakers in the lead – didn’t happen.

Instead, it happened that the Heat dominated, freezing the TD Garden in total looseness. And debunking a handful of other notable basketball taboos. Erik Spoelstra’s team is the first in the conventional NBA to win a conference final from eighth on the draw – the New York Knicks had made it in 1999, but in a season crippled by the lockout. She is the first to win a race-7 of a potential reverse sweep away: in the other precedents, that is, the comeback was on the back of theunderdog round and the defense of the advantage was up to the home team. Also for this reason, everyone was betting on Boston. Even more looking at the progress of game 6 in Florida, thrown away and then caught up again by the Celtics at the end thanks to a tap-in convict by Derrick White: one of the most breathtaking endgames in modern basketball. And a psychological boulder for anyone but Miami.

Not for Jimmy Butler’s gang. Who punctually gives her best when they give her up for dead – and vice versa, at 3-0 in favor she was a little excited. From the third minute onwards, Boston no longer understood how to score. Miami instead went on velvet, on the wings of Butler and a Caleb Martin in format all-star: one of the five ‘forgotten’ wingmen, who before resurrecting in the Heat house under the care of coach Spoelstra had sunk down to the G-League – the satellite league of the NBA. Martin, 26 points in game 7, led his team up to +10 at the end of the third quarter: with such an advantage and in this juncture of the game, the Miami historian said 67 games won out of 67. Added to that famous 151 out of 151. For Boston, on the other hand, zero times zero equals zero. Yet, even in the commentary, no one would have imagined that the Celtics candidates for the ring would melt like snow in the sun, ending up losing 84 to 103.

In the first round of these playoffs, Milwaukee, the other big favorite in the east, was also eliminated by Miami. And then Antetokounmpo’s evocative words went around the world: “There is no failure in sport”. Those pronounced years ago by Pat Riley, the hidden direction of these Heat, are much more brutal. “There are two things in basketball: victory and misery”. Today Riley, putting together his venerable career as a player, coach and president, crosses the finish line of the 19th NBA Finals. A quarter of all those ever played. This too is a record that is difficult to replicate.