My last time writing for this blog, I made it clear that I was rooting for the Miami Heat in their series against the Boston Celtics, and I was happy to see them drop both of their first two games at home and then get blown out by Miami on the road, giving the Heat a chance to do what seemed unthinkable before the series started and sweep their second-seeded foes. However, the Heat faced a Boston Massacre in their next two games, and then they had the stupidest loss ever in Game 6 to put them on the verge of doing something no NBA team has ever done before. When Boston was down 3-0, BetMGM had them +1600 to win the title, meaning that if you bet $100 on Boston winning the NBA Finals after their pitiful Game 3 performance, Vegas would have given you $1600 back if Boston won the East and then beat the Nuggets in the Finals. Now, the Celtics are +125, meaning if you bet $100 on them, you’ll get $125 if they win the whole thing. That’s a big difference, and it shows just how much the narrative around this series has changed.
I’m not going to talk about the Celtics anymore, though. I’m going to focus on the Heat and how much of a choke job it would be if they lost tonight. As I said before, no NBA team has ever come back after being down 3-0 in a best-of-seven series, and we’ve had best-of-seven series in every playoff series for 20 years. In 1951, when only the Finals were best-of-seven, the New York Knicks forced a Game 7 after being down 3-0 to a Rochester Royals team that no longer exists. They lost. In 1994, when every series after the first round was best-of-seven, the Denver Nuggets were able to force a Game 7 against the Utah Jazz in the first Jordan-less playoffs of the 90s. Karl Malone and the Jazz were able to win that series, too. In 2003, literally the first year we had a best-of-seven first round, the Portland Trail Blazers were able to force a Game 7 against Dirk Nowitzski and the Dallas Mavericks. Again, the team that led 3-0 would go on to win their series and avoid embarrassment of historic proportions.
The Mavs had a legitimate reason to think they won the series after three games, because before them, literally every team that won three games in their first round automatically won their series. Also, Nowitzski was known as the biggest playoff choker in the NBA before LeBron James was miraculously able to out-choke him in 2011. Jimmy “Stupidly Locked In” Butler will take that title for himself if the Heat lose tonight. Joel Embiid and James Harden have more of a history of choking, and they had their latest choke against this same Celtics team last round, but they weren’t up 3-0 in that series. Only five teams in the history of North American sports have come back to win a series after being down 3-0, with another Boston team in the Red Sox doing it against the Yankees in the 2004 baseball semifinals, still the only time that it has happened in baseball so far. In hockey, four teams have done it, including the Flyers in the Eastern Conference Semis in 2010, probably the only positive thing I’ll ever say about the Flyers on this blog. However you look at it, Miami will be doing something rare if they actually manage to choke the series away tonight, and while I’m still rooting for them, I’m not entirely opposed to watching some history get made, either. If only it was getting made by literally any other team.
