LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — As the Lakers advance Finals for the first time in a decade, a shadow awaits them.
It’s the franchise that hung the first banners won by LeBron James; the franchise that was coached and built by an executive whose name is synonymous with the Showtime era; the franchise that landed a key free agent the Lakers could have shot for and have now become giant-killers in the NBA bubble.
It will be the Miami Heat, Eastern Conference champions by virtue of a 125-113 win over the Boston Celtics, having carved a fiery and unexpected path to their first Finals since James left the franchise in 2014. For six years, they’ve largely been a shell of those glory days, and throughout the restart, they’ve shown their steadfast desire to get back on top.
The sixth and final game of their series against Boston saw a late takeover by Bam Adebayo, the 23-year-old first-time All-Star who ripped through the Celtics’ underwhelming front court to score 32 points, grab 14 rebounds and dish out five assists. It came on the heels of a Game 5 loss when Adebayo took the blame on himself: In Game 6, he scored 10 of his points in the final quarter.
“I just had to realign myself into who I really want to become,” Adebayo said. “You say you haven’t seen me be a scorer in the fourth before; well there you go.”
It was Adebayo who gave the final flourish to a convincing win: a reverse jam above a helpless Kemba Walker in the final minute. Boston, who fought through a seven-game series with Toronto in the previous round, got at least 20 points from four of their players, but could not overcome the multi-pronged attack of the the Heat.
Almost the entire roster has overturned since James played: Only 40-year-old Udonis Haslem, who doesn’t see the floor, remains. But Erik Spoelstra, who presided over the sideline and helped build James into a winner, is still entrenched and has burnished his reputation this postseason as one of the league’s best Xs-and-Os coaches.
The team is a construction of team president Pat Riley, whose slicked-back hair and coaching tenacity once prowled the sidelines of the Great Western Forum as the coach of the Showtime Lakers. He won four titles in the 80s heyday of Magic and Kareem, another as a coach with the Dwyane Wade and Shaq-led Heat in 2006, then swung the team-up of James, Wade and Chris Bosh to win a pair of titles in 2012 and 2013.
He sat behind a plexiglass barrier on Sunday night alongside team owner Micky Arison, knees folded until Miami prevailed, then stood up to make grand gestures with his arms in his team’s direction. Spoelstra promised that he would enjoy the win with a beer, then call “the Godfather” later that evening.
“He wants to win, at everything,” said Jimmy Butler, who scored 22 points. “He’s so much like everybody on this roster. And I’m sure he takes the losses just as hard as we do. You can tell that he’s just as excited as we are whenever we win.”
The Heat also feature an old foe: 36-year-old Andre Iguodala, who once won the 2015 Finals MVP in part for his defense on James. That was long ago, but on Sunday night he turned back the clock to drop 15 points, including 4 for 4 on 3-pointers. The veteran who won three titles with Golden State is now in his sixth consecutive Finals (matching Lakers assistant coach Phil Handy’s streak).
It’s a team nominally built around Butler, who has averaged 20.6 points, 4.3 assists and 6 rebounds this postseason. But the strength of the team has been the tireless hum of swift ball movement and cuts, a system that has made every player a threat from 34-year-old Goran Dragic to rising rookie star Tyler Herro. Eight players finished averaging between 20 and 10 points this year during the regular season, and the Heat were also the No. 2 deep shooting team in the league by percentage.
That collective all-out assault on offense — anchored as well by a sturdy, switchable defensive group — has been enough to take out an undermanned Indiana team in a sweep, topple the No. 1 seeded Milwaukee Bucks and their MVP, and a feisty, defense-first Boston team that pushed by erasing a 14 point lead and taking a six-point lead of their own in the fourth quarter, pushing to force a Game 7.
But Miami’s will was stronger, outscoring the Celtics by 10 in the final quarter. The lead was safe with two minutes left as unheralded Michigan product Duncan Robinson drilled a 3-pointer to give the Heat a 15-point lead.
There was celebration, donning shirts and hats to celebrate an Eastern Conference championship, but no confetti like the Lakers had done the night before — in line with the Heat’s austere, work-forward culture that they like to talk about at length. There wasn’t all that much to celebrate, they said — not with the Lakers and LeBron lying ahead.
“If you want to win, you’re going to have to go through a LeBron James-led team. At the end of the day, that’s what it normally comes down to,” Butler said. “That’s what we got to focus in on. Obviously you can’t focus in on him because he has so many really good players around him, but you’re going to get the same test over and over again until you pass, and that test is LeBron James.”
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