The Miami Heat avoided elimination Friday night after beating the Boston Celtics 111-103 on the road in Game 6. Jimmy Butler’s 47-point performance carried the Heat to a win, despite dealing with a nagging knee injury. The two teams will now meet one final time in a Game 7 on Sunday evening with a spot in the NBA Finals on the line.
Entering Friday night’s contest, the Heat were considered underdogs as several injuries to guys like Butler, Kyle Lowry, P.J. Tucker, Max Strus and Tyler Herro littered the injury report. With the Celtics holding homecourt advantage, it seemed like a pretty solid bet to pick Boston to close out the series. Even Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green thought the Celtics would advance to the NBA Finals.
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After the Warriors closed out the Dallas Mavericks to advance to the Finals on Thursday night, Green went on NBA on TNT to give his opinion on who he thinks Golden State will face for the championship.
“I’ll tell you who I think we’re gonna play, we’re gonna play Boston,” Green said.
Well, it turns out that comment got back to the Heat players because after shocking the Celtics on their home floor, Heat forward Udonis Haslem walked over to the NBA on ESPN crew to have them relay a message to Green.
“He wants a message to be relayed, he said tell Draymond thank you…thank you for the inspiration,” Mark Jackson said on air.
Haslem wasn’t the only Heat player who wanted to give thanks to Green for his motivational comments. P.J. Tucker said “tell Draymond I said I appreciate it,” after the game while talking to Scott Van Pelt on ESPN. When asked about it postgame, Tucker gave a more detailed response to what he and the team thought about Green’s comments.
“We laughed, I thought it was funny,” Tucker said. “He knows better than anybody, we still gotta play the game. There’s no guarantees for anybody in this league. On a night in night out basis these games have been crazy, they’ve been unpredictable all series. Beating each other at each other’s homes, we’re both great home teams. It’s just been crazy, so it’s kinda weird to be a player and pick another team.”
The Heat are now one win away from making the NBA Finals, and after this exchange of comments, it’ll make that matchup even more enticing if Miami gets past Boston in Game 7 on Sunday.
