Will Boston continue its dominance on the road or will Miami be up to the pressure of defending the local court?
• Full coverage: end of the Eastern Conference
MIAMI – The Eastern Conference Finals will be decided in a match 7 to win or return home on Sunday (20:30 ET, ESPN). And with the way this series has gone, you can’t say what to expect.
This will be the 145th game in NBA history. Local teams are 108-32 (.771) in Game 7, a record that does not include the four Games 7 that took place in the 2020 bubble. But as of the 2016 finals, the road team has won six of the last 10 games 7 without bubbles.
The Celtics have already won Game 7 in the playoffs, eliminating reigning Milwaukee Bucks champions two weeks ago. This will be the 35th game 7 in franchise history, but only the eighth that Boston has played on the road. They have a 3-4 record in the previous seven, with one of those defeats in Miami at the 2012 conference finals.
It’s the 11th game 7 for the Heat, who are 6-2 in Game 7 at home. Of course, the Games 7 from 10 or 20 years ago have little to do with what will be played on Sunday night.
Here are five keys to Game 7 of the first conference final, as we had two in the 2018 playoffs …
1. Limit errors
The first step to success for both the Heat and the Celtics is to control what they can control. Losses have been a problem for both teams in this series, but these are not the only mistakes that can be made in attack. And avoiding defensive breakdowns is also key.
The Celtics cleared a nine-point deficit in the fourth quarter on Friday in Game 6 and took a three-point lead. But poor execution at both ends of the floor in the last 3 1/2 minutes prevented them from closing the series.
With 99 minutes played, Marcus Smart made a spectacular save. PJ Tucker That’s all that’s left for the Celtics after it took them too long to get into their initial offense.
With Jayson Tatum also walking slowly down the track, Smart crossed the halfway line with 17 seconds left for the launch clock. And the Celtics kept moving slowly, with the Tatum ball screen for Smart with only seven seconds left on the clock. Tatum rolled under Kyle Lowry’s switch, but Jimmy Butler scored the shot and Smart had no passing angle with Jaylen Brown (the guy Butler was guarding) …
So the Celtics had nothing left with five seconds off the clock, and Smart decided their best shot was a pull-up 3 with Tucker in a position to contest the shot.
The score was still tied 30 seconds later, when the Celtics had one of their worst defensive breakdowns in the series. Max Strus set up a ball screen for Butler and Derrick White just smelled his pick-and-roll cover, allowing Butler to drive to the edge to look for an i-1 bucket that gave Heat the lead. forever…
Then the Celtics doubled their errors. Tatum turned blind in a double team, turning the ball around. And, instead of staying in front of the ball, White committed a foul transition with the Heat on the bonus.
(The last two minutes report found the call to be incorrect, saying White’s contact with Tucker was incidental. He probably still should have defended with his feet instead of his hands.)
That made it a two-possession game, and Boston would have no other chance to tie or take the lead.
The Celtics were given a chance to win the sixth game, and then deflected it with errors at both ends of the court that could have been completely avoided. Similar mistakes by either team in Game 7 would be even more damaging.
2. Great players making great plays
Speaking of Butler’s performance: 47 points (16 of 29 FG, 11 of 11 FT), nine rebounds, eight assists, four steals, one block and just one check, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said : “Sometimes you just need your best players and your man to make plays.”
The Heat may need another big Butler game on Sunday. And while that may not come in the form of 47 points, it could be a similar combination of making the open jumpers that the Celtics are giving him, getting to the edge (or the free throw line) even when asked to do it. shoot …
… And creating havoc on the defensive to give easy opportunities to the Heat in transition.
The need for the best players to grow up certainly doesn’t just apply to the Heat. And the Celtics will probably need more Tatum and Brown than they got in Game 6.
Of course, Tatum and Brown were limited to just eight points in total in the fourth quarter Friday (1 of 2 from the field, 6 of 8 from the line) did not mean they were away from the moment. It was a Heat defense that would not allow great players to make big plays.
The Celtics, as all series have been, were looking for misfits, and Strus was the main target most of the time. But the Heat did not allow Tatum and Brown to play one on one. In the second half of the 6th game, they quickly sent double teams …
… or at least shadow those individual clashes so that Tatum and Brown would see more defenders if they beat the former.
Being aggressive against this type of defense is not easy. And the billing shown above is not the only one Tatum had while trying to attack the defense’s teeth. (Here’s a second and a third.)
Most of the time, I did the right readings …
And the Celtics scored 57 points in 47 possessions (1.21 each) in the second half of the sixth game, so it’s not as if the Heat’s extra-aggressive defense is super effective. Still, it will be interesting to see, both at the beginning and at the end of Game 7, how aggressively the Heat send several defenders to Tatum and Brown. A similar approach to Sunday’s jump will force other Celtics to make plays and throws.
3. Shooting and late execution
This is an impossible league, and according to Second Spectrum, the team with the best shots (Miami in Games 1 and 5, Boston in 2, 3, 4 and 6) only has 3 -3 in this series. Game 7 can only be reduced to which team makes the most shots, whether good or bad.
And sometimes a shot at the end of the clock (like the previous Smart 3) is all you get. In Game 3 (which they won by six points), the Heat made three hard shots on the timer of the shot clock …
These 3 shots that the Heat hit the ringing bell were … lucky. pic.twitter.com/SvYZk7k6rE
– John Schuhmann (@johnschuhmann) May 22, 2022
When they went down three in the fourth quarter of Game 6, Kyle Lowry hit what was probably the biggest shot in the series so far, a 3 at the end of the clock in a crowd that saved a possession that went nowhere.
A few minutes later, Butler fired an even harder shot at the end of the clock to increase the Heat six in the final minute.
In their three wins, the Heat have 21 of 49 (43%) in the last six seconds of the throw clock. In their three defeats, they are 8 of 37 (22%). The Celtics don’t have such a big differential, but they’ve also made a higher percentage of their shots in the last six seconds of the clock.
On Sunday there will be situations of delay for both teams, and finding ways to turn them into points will be very important.
4. The status of Tyler and the Time Lord
Health has been an important factor throughout this series. The Heat looked like the most exhausted team in Game 5, but Butler and Lowry seemed to find their legs two nights later.
Tyler Herro has missed the last three games and is questionable for Game 7. Herro offers the Celtics another defender to score. The Heat have allowed more than 122 points for every 100 possessions with him on the ground in this series, and he has not been able to make up for it with his offense, throwing 1 of 14 from the 3-point range in all three. games he has played. But Herro can be flammable on the other hand, and is a player who can save some of those possessions that go nowhere.
Both Smart (right ankle) and Robert Williams III (left knee) appear to be questionable for Boston. They both played in the sixth game, though Williams did not play in the fourth quarter. He’s had some pretty amazing defensive moments in this series, but also a few times when he’s been caught off guard. In the third quarter on Sunday, both Butler (on a drive) and Victor Oladipo (one step back 3) were able to score against Williams in isolation.
The good has outweighed the bad, and the Celtics have been at their best defensively in this series with Williams on the ground, allowing just one point per possession. If it is moving well and not caught with the flat foot (this would apply to number 1 above), it can have a big impact.
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John Schuhmann is a senior statistics analyst at NBA.com. You can email him here, find his file here, and follow him on Twitter.
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