You apparently could hear a pin drop in the Heat locker room after Saturday night’s game at Kaseya Center.
This wouldn’t be a noteworthy development for the average NBA team that just endured a gut-wrenching playoff loss. But as ESPN’s Nick Friedell explained Monday morning on “Get Up,” it was a stray from the norm for Miami.
“The disbelief in that room was palpable,” Friedell said. “That was one of the quietest locker rooms I’ve ever been in after a game. Now, you have to understand, Jimmy Butler usually has that speaker bumping in that room — win or lose. It was silent. After about 10 or 15 minutes, Gabe Vincent walks over to his locker and he hits play on his phone and he plays ‘Life Goes On’ by Ed Sheeran. Certainly, that’s the mantra the Heat want to have going into Game 7. Push all of the other stuff away, focus on the game.”
Butler and head coach Erik Spoelstra maintained focus on the task at hand after Derrick White’s heroics in South Beach. But getting back on track and winning the Eastern Conference finals on the road will be far easier said than done for Miami.
“The emotional hurdle they’re going to have to work through to get into tonight and get over what happened the other night in that ending is gigantic,” Friedell said. “They could not believe, like the rest of the world, that that happened and that White put that ball in at the end of the game.”
Oddsmakers aren’t high on the Heat’s chances of avoiding a historic collapse. The Celtics are a 7-point favorite at FanDuel Sportsbook for Game 7.
