Hoops Tonight - Celtics-Heat Game 6 Reaction: Boston forces game 7 with Derrick White buzzer beater

do you Cash Back? Well? That was literally the wildest finished to a basketball game I can remember ever seeing in my time covering the NBA, And it was kind of funny because the way that both teams made their impact down the stretch kind of fell in line with their identities. Miami getting back into the game with a couple of really savvy last minute adjustments and then the Celtics taking a bad shot and in the process opening up an opportunity for an offensive rebound to win the game.

We're gonna break it all down. I have a lot of thoughts that we're gonna dive into. You guys know the drill before we get started. Subscribe to the Volumes YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason lt so you guys don't miss any show announcements. And if, for whatever reason, you guys missed one of these videos and you can't

get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget. You can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. In last but not at least, you guys have heard me talk about game Time, the fastest growing ticketing app in the United States. If you're looking to get out to an NBA game, a Major League Baseball game, a concert, or a comedy show, game Timing is a game Time has amazing last minute deals on tickets to all of these.

So if you're looking to get out to a game in the NBA Finals, game Time has a deal for you. If you're looking to get out to a NHL playoff game, game Time has a deal for you. They've taken amazing care of me in the past and went to go see the University of Arizona men's basketball team at McHale Center earlier this year. Got a great seat, got a great deal, knew exactly what I was getting myself into.

The user experience was super smooth. I highly recommend it to you guys, So no matter where you live, get out and have some fun this week. Download the game time at Enter your email and redeem code Hoops for twenty dollars off your first purchase terms apply again, enter your email and the code Hoops. That's Hops for twenty dollars off. Download game time today, last minute tickets, lowest

price guaranteed. All right, let's talk some basketball. So it's funny I as I'm prepping for these shows, I especially for instant reaction shows, I try to have kind of like bullet points that I go for when I work

the next day. It's usually a little bit more detailed with the notes, But every time you're there's a really close game, it's always complicated, right, because everything can get completely flipped over when a team steals it, right, like what almost happened tonight and then Boston ended up stealing

it back. But I thought, I want to focus. I want to focus on the end of that game before we get to the to some of the other things that I noticed throughout, because there were some very specific reasons why Boston has taking control of this series again,

and I do want to dive into those things. But at the core of these two teams, they have an identity, and one of Boston's identities is they struggle with late game execution and just execution in general against you know, schematic challenges, and one of Miami's an important part of Miami's identities. They are always the team that's looking to make schematic adjustments and they seem to have an edge

in that side of the game. And then they have a superstar who's always supremely confident in late game situations, which gives them an advantage. And so Boston's up nine, I think with like two and a half minutes left or something like that, and Eric Spolser made two adjustments in the way that he was attacking on both ends of the floor that turned things around rather quickly. And

the first was he went zone. And again, the genius thing about zone and the way that Spolster uses it is he never uses it enough to truly give it an opponent an opportunity to solve it. There was a game earlier in this series where he didn't use it at all in the first quarter, and then he used it a ton in the second quarter, and then he didn't use it at all in the third quarter, and then he used it a ton in the fourth quarter.

That's something that he tends to do as more of a rhythm disruptor rather than as like an actual defensive base scheme, right, And so he goes to zone at the end of the game, and Boston just has no idea what to do with it. And they were already a little discombobulated. Over the course of the second half. Most of their success was coming on the defensive end of the floor and just finding little bits of offense here and there. But that got them a bunch of stops in the in a row down the stretch on

the other end of the floor. There's this weird thing that was happening over the course of the game. Will dive a little bit deeper into it later, but Jimmy Butler was not confident with the basketball in his hands at all, and so they were running a ton of stuff for Duncan Robinson. He was basically the focal point of the offense through the middle portion of the fourth quarter and well really for most of the fourth quarter.

And what was interesting about that is down the stretch of the game after, you know, after Sposhal went zone and they started making their comeback, Jimmy Butler took back control of the offense. But they started doing so with ghost screens with Duncan Robinson. And what's interesting about that is they established the fear of Duncan throughout the quarter with his shot making. I think he made a couple of threes and he just you know, just in general,

was the guy they were running everything through. But as a result, Boston was overreacting to those ghost screens. So remember what a ghost screen is is when they have a guard to guard action. In this case, Duncan Robinson on Jimmy Butler, but instead of actually setting a screen, he's just running by or just doing a dribble handoff something that's going to try to trick Boston into thinking

they either need to switch or to help. And in those situations it opened up opportunities for Jimmy Butler to get downhill. And again, a dribble handoff and a ghost screen kind of have similar functionality in that specific instance.

So Off Tatum, for instance, is chasing Duncan Robinson and he doesn't want to leave him because Duncans made a couple threes and Jimmy's being guarded by Derek White, and Derek White as Duncan's running by, gives up a little bit of an angle for Jimmy to drive, and Tatum's not there to help because he's chasing Duncan. That right handed driving lane is open, and Jimmy started to get downhill and he started to get to the foul line right and that was how quickly things turned around. Boston

just couldn't score against Miami's zone. Other than that pull up three that Jimmy made to kind of start the run, everything was downhill right on that right side of the rim, and he started to just, I don't know, dig deep through sheer force of will and start to get more of that lift that he needed to finish around the rim and to draw fouls. And then on that final possession, I don't know what the heck Al Horford was thinking, but he was just way too physical with Jimmy Butler.

As he was driving, it looked like he wanted to take a three. I think Jimmy understood the reality of a game seven in Boston and how difficult that was going to be to win, and it looked like he was going for the kill and Horford got him. But then on the other end of the floor, what's so funny is I just broke down for you guys, schematically through the zone and through the dho ghost screen stuff

with Jimmy and Duncan. How Miami like smartly worked it her way back into the game right, capitalizing on their Basketball IQ advantage. On the other end of the floor, Boston, Marcus Smart, there's three seconds left. There's three seconds left, and you're down one point, and he takes an impossible fade away three over his right shoulder on that left wing,

an incredibly difficult shot. But if you guys go back and you watch the replay, Max Struce is guarding Derek White on the inbounds and he's completely ignoring him and playing out towards almost almost close to the top of the key to dissuade those guys running off of screens. And so when that pass was made, Struce did not have an opportunity to recover back to Derek White in time.

And you know, it's kind of a no no in general to ignore the inbounds passer in a situation like that, not just for the offensive rebound that ended up taking place, but all it takes is a quick passback. So say Marcus Smart catches that instead of shooting it, Derek White just steps and bounds it onto that left wing, he could get a touch pass back for a wide open three. So that's why most coaches don't ignore the inbounds passer in a situation like that. But again, I'm never going

to second guest Spolster's decision making. He's a basketball genius and the best coach in the league in my opinion. But as a byproduct of that decision, there is no body on Derek White, and so he just gave that an extra effort, that championship effort to sprint in there and just barely get that thing off with one tenth of a second left to steal that game and send it to Game seven. So a wildly entertaining game with a wild comeback and then stolen right back at the

buzzer by the Boston Celtics. I don't know. I'd love to hear you guys in the YouTube comments if any of you guys have a take on a game that was a crazier finish than that one. We've all seen crazy comebacks, We've all seen crazy game winners. I've never seen that crazy of a game of a comeback feeding right into that crazy of a game winner for the other team. To save a team from elimination. Just just

truly unbelievable stuff. So let's kind of dive into some of the dynamics of the series that have swung in Boston's favor. So, in my opinion, this series swung back in Boston's favor based on two matchups that they were losing kind of in a dramatic sense through the first three games. Now, to be clear, I think Boston is the more talented team. So it's funny as I look back, just as a basketball fan at this particular Celtics team, I don't they have a lot of unlikable qualities as

a team. You know, their chemistry is a little funky. Sometimes they don't play you know, sometimes they play the good team basketball, but other times they get away from that. They can be arrogant and go extended stretches without playing hard, which is a you know, objectively unlikable quality. So there's a lot of things there that make them not necessarily my favorite basketball team that I've ever covered. But at the same time, like the talent is undeniable, they are.

They are the most talented roster in the NBA in my opinion, certainly a hell of a lot more talented than this Miami Heat team, and there's a that's the main reason why they've ripped off three wins in a row and why they have a very good chance to be the first team to come back from three to zero in NBA history, Ryan, if you don't mind doing me a favor, can you pull the line for Game seven. I'd love to see that. I bet you it's like eight points. But yeah, there's no doubt that the talent

is the main driving factor. But as we look at how Miami went up three to zero and how Boston regained control, I look at two matchups. First of all, Jason Tatum has flipped the dynamic of the Jimmy Butler matchup and has started to dominate him in a way that he did not in the early part of the series. I had said on several occasions that I thought Jimmy was a better player. Tatum has been the better player over the course of the last three games. And then

Baman a baio. If you guys remember in game two, there's a Gabe Vincent three I think on the right wing, and on the play he gets the offensive rebound because Al Horford just puts a lame box out on him. He just kind of reaches over the top kicks it back out. Jimmy Butler ends up working back down to the post and misses another jumper, and bam Adebayo just throws him off like like he's Aaron Donald or something and gets the rebound and dunks at home with two hands.

That battle is completely flipped. Over the course of the tail end of this series, Al Horford is starting to win those box out confrontations. He's starting to bother him at the rim and force misses. He had a gigantic block in the second half, just high pointing Bahim Adepaio

at the summit and sending him back. He has flipped the dynamic of that matchup, and so Miami's two best players suddenly turned into their two most inconsistent players down the stretch of the series, and instead it's been guys like Caleb Martin and Duncan Robinson and Gabe Vincent that have had to step up for Miami to keep them competitive. Those two things switching have been would have turned this series around early on. Butler out playing Jason Tatum, bam

torching Al Horford. Jaylen Brown's really struggled throughout the entire series for the most part. That was a big part of them. Playing down to their competition to that extent was a big part of Miami's early lead. With Jason Tatum, there's been a market a change in the way that he's attacked. So through the first sixteen games of this playoff run, Jayson Tatum had made just eleven mid range jump shots, which comes out to just under seven tenths

of a make per game. He's made eight in the last three games of this series, so averaging almost three makes per game. Since then, a lot of the similar stuff that we talked about in earlier videos that are starting to clear the side more. He's starting to work with with his back to the basket more and go to shots that he can make it a higher clip than the pull up threes that Miami's sitting on and pressuring and the struggles that he can have to sometimes

finish in traffic around the rim. Right, And you know I tweeted this earlier, but there are three reasons why I think shot variety is so important in the NBA. I talk a lot about this, but it makes you less predictable. Right, So, like if I'm guarding you one hundred possessions, and you do fifty step back jump shots and fifty drives to the rim. Like towards the end of that set of one hundred possessions, I'm gonna have a pretty good idea of how to guard you because

you're just doing the same thing every time. But like, part of what makes a guy like Luka Doncicz so difficult to guard is in a hundred possessions, you know you'll you're not gonna have very many of them that look the same. He's gonna shoot from a bunch of different spots on the floor. He's gonna attack you from a bunch of different spots. Sometimes he'll face you up,

sometimes he'll post you up. Sometimes they'll attack you with a live dribble Like it's from every single spot on the floor, and it adds that variety, but beyond that, it's what allows you to audible. Jason Tatum has really struggled with that pull up three point shot in this series. Right, it's not working. So what do you do when that's not working? If you keep attacking with the live dribble from thirty feet and they know that you don't trust your pull up three. That just makes you even more

easy to guard. But if you can audible and say, okay, I don't have this working, let me give the ball up and let me work over to the right side of the floor. I've got a height advantage against Jimmy Butler. I work a lot on these little short, seventeen eighteen foot jump shots, on face up situations, post up turnarounds over both shoulders. I work a lot on these things.

Let me just go down here. And there was that big stretch in the second quarter, that obscene run that he went on where he was just attacking Jimmy Butler, face him up, hard, step back, kind of like sidestep, dribble into the lane, going to his left and makes an easy little jump shot over the top. Then he very next possession just a fade away over his left shoulder. Again, they're they're closer to the rim, they're not that three point shot that he doesn't trust. It just gives him

another thing to go to. And then the third thing is it allows you to cater your attack based on your matchup. I've told a story on the show before, but like, uh, when I was younger, I used to just take a ton of threes off the dribble, and so most of the guys around town that were small guys would just start ball pressureing the hell out of me because I wasn't a great ball handler back then, and if you pressed me up up off the three

point line, I could really struggle. And so over the course of my late twenties, I just started adding a bunch of post up stuff because I knew if I added post up stuff, then every single time that they switched a small guard on me, I could just give the basketball up and go down to the post and ask for the bat. And then once I start killing the kid in the post, then they can put a

bigger defender on me. Then I can work him back out to the perimeter and start attacking with a live dribble, where my quickness becomes an advantage when you have the when you diversify your attack, you allow yourself to be able to pick and choose your method of attack based on what the defense is allowing. Jason Tatum has always had that stuff. He's been a good post player, he's been a guy that can attack from the mid range. He abandoned it over the course of the season for

whatever reason. I've shared a bunch of shot charts of where you just see a bunch of threes from the top of the key and shots in the paint. And I don't know what the I don't know if that was from somebody on the coaching staff, I don't know if that was from somebody in the front office. I don't know if that was just him himself simplifying his attack.

But for whatever reason, that was the way that he went about things, and that flipping has been a big part of his improved attack over the course of the series. Now you might say, Jason, that's eight makes, that's sixteen points in three games. How is that that big of a deal. Everything in basketball is connected. Those eight makes are what allows him to feel more confident, feel more comfortable,

to gain a rhythm. He only made two mid range jump shots during that second quarter attack, but he made a bunch of other plays as a playmaker. He was feeling himself straight up, just straight up, was in a great rhythm. That's all connected. If you don't get those easy mid range shots and you're missing your pull up three from the top of the key, maybe you don't get into that rhythm. Maybe you don't feel confident and

good about yourself that that's a huge deal. Like Jason Tatum has won the psychological battle with Jimmy Butler over the last three games. Think about how much that matters for the whole team. It trickles down the roster. When you're flanking a star who's playing better and is carrying himself more confidently than the star across the way, that makes you feel more confident in your ability to win. That's that big belief thing that we talked about. You

have to give extra efforts to win games. You have to believe in your ability to achieve the ultimate goal. To give yourself the fight, you need to give that extra effort when you're truly exhausted. And Jason Tatum has flipped that dynamic over the course of this series. And yes, I believe something stupid like eight made mid range jump shots in a three game span can contribute in a large way to that wave of confidence. Boston's defense I

thought was fantastic tonight. You know I talked about this earlier. The zone was a big part of that late run for Miami. But Miami was having a lot of success against Boston and their main demand defense in the second half as well, just being really physical digging down into driving lanes and they slowed down Jason Tatum. They got a lot of stops in that second half, but Boston kept control of the game for the most part because they were also dominating the game on the other end

of the floor before that late run. And I haven't looked at the statue since then, but before that late run, Miami had twenty eight points in the paint total. Like Boston was dominating all those rim confrontations. Jimmy Butler loves to drive really hard to his left and like get a jump stop into a guy's chest and turn back over his left shoulder for a hook shot. He was not even taking that shot down the stretch of this game, at least until the final stretch when he started being

aggressive to the rim. But he wouldn't even looking to shoot when he was getting downhill, in large part because he was scared, not scared, scares of the wrong word. He was worried that he wasn't gonna be able to get a decent look or that he was gonna get blocked, just because the sheer amount of rim protection that Boston was throwing at them with Al Horford to Jason Tatum, was flying around, Jaylen Brown was flying around, Robert Williams

was making all sorts of plays. They got in Miami's head in the painted area to the point where they're two best athletes. Jimmy Butler and Bamannebayo were really struggling down there, and so again, Boston's offensive struggles are an important part of their identity, right, but their defensive identity

can carry them through those stretches, and they did. I want to talk about Jimmy Butler for just a minute, because I did think it was interesting that they ran through Duncan Robinson as much as they did in that fourth quarter, and up until that final run, he really struggled. And this is kind of becoming a little bit of a recurring theme with Jimmy Butler. And credit to Jimmy

because he damn near stole that game. And that's just Jimmy Butler's supreme confidence, never getting down enough on himself to allow a bad three and a half quarters to affect him down the stretch. Credit to Jimmy there, but his impactfulness has taken a nose dive over the course of the tail end of this series. And this is again a recurring theme. Last year in the Eastern Conference Final, same sort of deal, like in the middle portion of

that series, not the same guy. Now he was banged up, but I think he's a little banged up in this series too, And that's part of the deal. Like as things progress, you can get these really big time Jimmy Butler games and moments, but you can also get these stinkers in there too, And that's kind of part of what comes with that Jimmy Butler experience. That's what happened

in the twenty twenty finals. I remember like he'll game five, will go for forty and steal a game, and then in game six he's like straight up ineffective, you know. And again like when people I see a lot of heat fans and people be like, oh, Jimmy Butler's every bit as good as your favorite player. He's everybody as good as Lebron or is everybod as good as as Kevin Duran or Steph Curry Oryiannis, And it's like this

is the difference. The difference is is like when you get to this level, like like if Lebron James has eight points in a game, like I think Jimmy had a couple of single digit scoring games in last year's Eastern Conference Finals, everybody'd be having apoplexy about it, right, Like they're part of the Jimmy Butler experience. Is like you you're gonna get other worldly play from him three or four times in a series, but those other games can be He just looks exhausted, and I don't really

have a good explanation for it. I don't know if it's him getting hurt. I don't know if it's just the sh amount of energy it requires for him to be as impactful as he is in it being fatigue related. But this is you know, they've three of the last four years they've made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, and in three of the last four years he's kind of fatigued on his way to getting eliminated and had

some rough games in there. It's become part of the Jimmy Butler experience, which again goes to show you, like as we kind of zoom out from this, because as we look at Game seven, I like, Boston's probably going to win. They're an eight point favorite, which is what I had predicted. Obviously, Miami can win. Boston is an

arrogant team. Don't be surprised if they mess around and then it's a close game late and Miami steals it certainly on the table, but I think Boston will probably win, and either even if Miami does win, I don't think they have any chance to win in the NBA Finals against Denver, and so at a certain point, as you're looking out from this, Jimmy Butler clearly is not capable

of doing this all by himself. You know, bam Adebayo is a fantastic player, but he's not gonna go blow for blow with another team star for a seven game series at this stage. Right, Eric Spolstra is the best coach in the league, but he can only do so much with the amount of talent that he has on the roster. At what point does Miami put a more functional, talented roster together to give themselves a better chance to

compete in these environments. Because you've got a certain point, look at how good Eric Spolstra is and how good Jimmy Butler is in these late game situations, and be like man, we are one legitimate shot creator away and another forward and athletic forward away from being a team

that can legitimately win the whole thing. But right now they're just like squeezing every last drop out of the sponge, and the sponge is completely dry when they get eliminated in some late round of the playoffs, and so at a certain point you need to give them a bigger sponge, so to speak. All Right, so I do expect Boston to win Game seven. This seems like anything the scare there down the stretch will inspire them to bring the

requisite effort. Certainly, give Miami a chance. I would never give them less than a thirty forty percent chance to win a game like this with the amount of faith that I have in Eric Spoelstra and Jammie Butler and vam Adebayo. But I do think Boston will win, and I do think for all of this basketball fans that's better because I think Boston's gonna give Denver a much better fight in the finals should we get to that point. All right, guys, that is all we have for right now.

We are taking tomorrow off. I will see you guys on Monday night for Game seven in the Eastern Conference Finals. As always, I appreciate you guys rocking with us and we'll see you. Then the volume