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Not a lot of coaches and teams can take the type of gut punch like the one that the Miami Heat took Saturday night and respond from it.
Three seconds away from a trip to the NBA Finals after Jimmy Butler knocked down three free throws to put Miami up one, Derrick White broke the hearts of nearly everyone in the Kaseya Center as he had the game-winning put-back at the buzzer to force a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But Erik Spoelstra still has the utmost confidence in the guys in his locker room to go up to Boston and win Game 7.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get it down, but we’re going to go up there and get it done,” he said postgame.
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“We wish we could tip this thing off right now…but we’ll wait 48 hours and do this thing in Boston.”
Heat HC Erik Spoelstra following Miami’s Game 6 loss pic.twitter.com/7rF1tKvUQm
Spoelstra and the Heat are on the verge of being on the wrong side of history after being taken to a seventh game despite having a 3-0 series lead just about a week ago. Boston has looked much more like the team that everyone saw in the regular season.
But if anyone is able to pull off a miracle in the TD Garden, it’s the Heat, who have already won two games in that building in this series and who have a history of making things tougher than they need to be.
Miami trailed by 10 with about four minutes remaining in Game 6 and willed themselves back into the lead thanks to some timely play by Butler, who had a poor performance for much of the night.
Those three seconds may come back to haunt Spoelstra and his squad for a long time if they aren’t able to close this thing out.
