Heat’s unprecedented playoff run as No. 8 seed moves into NBA Finals: ‘Nobody is satisfied’

Miami Heat star Jimmy Butler predicted this a year before it happened.

“Next year, we will have enough and we’re going to be right back in this same situation and we’re going to get it done,” Butler said on May 29, 2022, after a hard-fought Game 7 loss to the Boston Celtics in last season’s Eastern Conference finals.

Butler’s words proved to be prophetic. Exactly a year from that day, the Heat earned a dominant 103-84 win against the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of this season’s East finals on Monday night at TD Garden to become just the second No. 8 seed in league history to advance to the NBA Finals and avoid becoming the first team in NBA history to lose a best-of-7 series after winning the first three games.

The Heat opens the Finals on Thursday against the Western Conference’s top-seeded Nuggets in Denver.

2023 Heat-Nuggets NBA Finals primer: Full schedule, ticket info, who’s favored and more

“I just know why coach Pat [Riley] and coach [Erik Spoelstra] wanted me to be here, and that’s to compete at a high level and to win championships,” Butler said after Monday’s East finals-clinching win in Boston. “I know that the group that they put around me at all times is going to give me an opportunity to do so. So I was always very, very confident in that.”

But not many on the outside had confidence in the Heat after a shaky regular season that forced Miami to qualify for the playoffs through the play-in tournament. What has followed has been an unprecedented and magical run.

The New York Knicks are the only other team in league history to make it to the Finals as a No. 8 seed, but they did it in 1999 after a lockout-shortened regular season. The Heat is the first No. 8 seed to pull it off during a non-lockout shortened season and is four wins away from becoming the first No. 8 seed to win an NBA championship.

“I think probably people can relate to this team. Life is hard,” Spoelstra said. “Professional sports is just kind of a reflection sometimes of life, that things don’t always go your way. The inevitable setbacks happen and it’s how you deal with that collectively. There’s a lot of different ways that it can go. It can sap your spirit. It can take a team down for whatever reason. With this group, it’s steeled us and made us closer and made us tougher.”

The Heat, which was outscored by a total of 26 points this regular season, is also the first team since at least 2000 to advance to the conference finals after posting a negative point differential in the regular season.

“It’s that underdog mentality,” Heat center Bam Adebayo said. “I know people think it’s a joke. But when you go through what we went through this whole season, ups and downs, people talking good and bad about us, writing us off, hearing all that noise, and to be four games away from a championship just speaks volume to, one, we never quit, and two, everybody rallied together.”

The Heat entered each of the first three rounds of the playoffs as underdogs, upsetting the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, the fifth-seeded New York Knicks in the second round and the second-seeded Celtics in the conference finals.

The Heat is again a heavy underdog in the Finals, with the Nuggets opening as nine-point favorites against the Heat for Game 1, according to Fan Duel. Denver also opened as a 1-to-5 favorite (-500) to win the series.

“We have some incredible competitors in that locker room,” Spoelstra said. “They love the challenge. They love putting themselves out there in front of everybody. Open to criticism. Open to everything. But to compete for it, and that’s a beautiful thing.”

Monday’s win to clinch a trip to the Finals came after the Heat’s crushing 104-103 loss in Game 6 on Saturday at Kaseya Center, when Celtics guard Derrick White made a game-winning putback with one-tenth of a second remaining. Like the Heat has done so many times through this turbulent season, it regrouped mentally and physically to deliver a quality effort to win Game 7 on the road.

“I think it just sheds a lot of light on how resilient our group is, how mentally engaged that we are and how positive we are mentally, no matter how the season has been going,” said Martin, who scored a season-high 26 points in Game 7. “Like I said, we have been talking about how the regular season has been preparing us for these moments, and I just think it comes full circle.”

Martin was the breakout star of the East finals, averaging 19.3 points and 6.4 rebounds per game while shooting an incredible 60.2 percent shooting from the field and 22 of 45 (48.9 percent) from three-point range in the series.

But it was Butler, as the leader, who was awarded the Larry Bird Trophy as MVP of the East finals. Butler averaged 24.7 points, 7.6 rebounds, 6.1 assists and 2.6 steals per game while shooting 42 percent from the field and 34.8 percent from three-point range in the series.

“I’m just confident,” Butler said. “I know the work that we all put into it, so I know what we’re capable of. Nobody is satisfied. We haven’t done anything. We don’t play just to win the Eastern Conference, we play to win the whole thing.”

The Heat flew to Denver immediately after Monday’s Game 7 win, landing in Colorado early Tuesday morning.

The Heat doesn’t have much time to rest, with Finals media day on Wednesday and Game 1 of the championship series on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Nuggets will have nine days off before Game 1 of the Finals after completing the 4-0 sweep of the Los Angeles Lakers in the West finals on May 22.

The NBA Finals schedule looks like this: Game 1 on Thursday in Denver at 8:30 p.m., Game 2 on Sunday in Denver at 8 p.m., Game 3 on June 7 in Miami at 8:30 p.m., Game 4 on June 9 in Miami at 8:30 p.m., Game 5 on June 12 in Denver at 8:30 p.m., Game 6 on June 15 in Miami at 8:30 p.m. and Game 7 on June 18 in Denver at 8 p.m. All of the games will be on ABC.

“We know we have more work to do,” Spoelstra said. “But damn, is this hard. It is hard. It’s a hard business, and it’s hard to survive three rounds just to get to that final round. We’re extremely grateful for that.”

The Nuggets are proof of that, as this marks their first NBA Finals appearance in franchise history.

But the Heat is heading to its seventh NBA Finals appearance in franchise history and sixth NBA Finals appearance in the past 13 seasons. The Heat’s seven Finals appearances since 2006 are the most in the league during that span.

“Considering everything this group has been through, we’ve had faith in one another and we prevailed,” Heat guard Gabe Vincent said. “We got four more wins to go.”