With their season in play, the Miami Heat played an inspired game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Friday night.
Needing a win to extend their season, the Heat, the top seed, endured a furious rally from the Boston Celtics to a 111-103 victory at TD Garden.
Jimmy Butler played the game of his life, pouring a maximum of 47 points in the playoffs to send the best of the seven series back to Miami for the 7th game the winner takes home.
After a 25-point home defeat in Game 5 and heading down the road for Game 6, almost every NBA analyst and even some players, including the Warriors striker Draymond Green, went count the Heat.
That was all the fuel needed for the heat.
Moments after the final bell rang in Boston, veteran Heat forward Udonis Haslem approached Mike Breen, Mark Jackson and Jeff Van Gundy at the ESPN broadcast table and had something to say.
“He wants a message across,” Jackson said. “He said, ‘Thank you Draymond Green.’ Draymond Green said, ‘We’ll play the Boston Celtics.’
A few minutes later, PJ Tucker joined ESPN and said essentially the same thing.
“Hey, tell Draymond I said ‘thank you,'” Tucker told ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt at SportsCenter after the game.
After the Warriors’ victory over the Mavericks on Thursday night to secure their place in the NBA Finals, Green attended TNT’s “Inside the NBA” program and was asked which team he would like to play. .
“If you ask me who I want to play, I’ll tell you who I think we’ll play,” Green said. “We’re going to play in Boston. That’s who we’re going to play.”
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Green could have ignited a fire unexpectedly under the heat. If Miami beat Boston in Game 7 on Sunday night, they will have additional motivation in the NBA Finals against the Warriors.
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