Heat Conquer Celtics

Congratulations to the Miami Heat who finished off a five-game series with the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Celtics. The series wasn’t nearly as close as I expected it to be but I think injuries played a pretty big part – not necessarily in the outcome – in how easy Miami made it look.

The Miami Heat reminded me of those 90s Bulls teams and even of the more recent dominating Lakers teams in this series. Particularly the last game, it seemed like the Heat were just interested in keeping the score close until the fourth quarter when they would clamp down and just overwhelm the opposing team. No, I am not saying this team is as good as those Bulls teams or those Lakers teams… yet. But to finish off a veteran Celtics team with a 16-0, run in the final 4:15 of a closeout game is no small feat. Add to that the late 14-0, run to put away Game 2 and then outscoring Boston in the Game 4 overtime 12-4, and the comparison seems quite apt, at least for this series.  There was no pussyfooting around. The Heat put their foot on the neck of the Celtics and ended it with the “killer instinct” that those two previously mentioned teams were renowned for.

Can they keep it up? After such an emotional win, teams usually go in one of two directions: they either carry the momentum on to a championship win or they get swept the in next round. With the amount of recovery time this team will have, I feel like they’ll be able to get their heads on straight and take the former direction. (This isn’t a TOTAL homer pick as I used to live in Chicago and was a big fan of the Bulls.)