Wow, this has been one hell of a wild Eastern Conference Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat. Here are the biggest leads for each team in every game so far and the results:

  • Game 1: Celtics 13, Heat 20 – Heat won 118-107
  • Game 2: Celtics 34, Heat 10 – Celtics won 127-102
  • Game 3: Celtics 0, Heat 26 – Heat won 109-103
  • Game 4: Celtics 32, Heat 0 – Celtics won 102-82

Over the first two games, one of the teams had to overcome a double-digit lead, and in the last two, one of the teams never even held an advantage. That’s a pretty crazy statistic.

Jayson Tatum bounced back from a terrible Game 3, and his apparent shoulder injury toward the end of that contest, to put up 31 points, eight rebounds, five assists and two blocks while shooting 8 of 16 overall, 1 of 7 from three, and 14 of 16 from the free throw line. Tatum was in attack mode, and made up for missing all of those three-pointers by attacking the basket.

No other Celtic scored more than 14 points, but this time the Celtics were able to take advantage of their huge disparity in free throws. The Heat shot 8 of 14 overall from the charity stripe while the Celtics made 34 of 38. That helped Boston win the game by 20, even after they made only 8 of 34 three-pointers.

Advertisement

Miami were definitely off their game, and set an ignominious team record with their first quarter performance. Their entire starting five scored a grand total of 18 points, with Bam Adebayo leading the way with… nine.

That horrid start gave the Celtics a 39-18 advantage after the first quarter, and unlike Game 3, Miami never managed to get close. It wouldn’t be a reach to assume that the Heat have lingering injuries that are hampering them, considering that Adebayo led the starters in minutes played with 28, and Victor Oladipo led them in total minutes with 30 coming off the bench.

I don’t know what to make of the rest of the series, but I do know that I don’t want to miss Game 5. It feels likely that there will be some sort of weird blowout situation on the books again. I’ve got no clue who wins, but this series has just been weird.