Skip Bayless is sticking to his guns as it relates to the Eastern Conference finals, even with the Boston Celtics again showing life Thursday night in a 110-97 win over the Miami Heat at TD Garden.
Bayless tweeted “Heat in 6” as the Celtics raced out to an early lead in Game 5. The FS1 pundit then questioned Boston’s ability to sustain its performance from beyond the arc, tweeting “Hope the Celtics make 11 more threes in the second half. Go ahead, use ’em up.”
This all culminated with Bayless’ final tweet of Thursday night as the Celtics put the finishing touches on a victory that sent the series back to Miami.
“No team in NBA history has come back from 0-3 down in a playoff series. 0-151,” Bayless wrote. “It’s about to be 0-152.”
Clearly, Bayless isn’t impressed with the Celtics’ back-to-back wins, the first coming in Miami and the second on Boston’s home floor. While Boston finally played with its requisite energy in Games 4 and 5 after falling behind 3-0 in the best-of-seven series, there’s still a lot of work to be done. The Heat have another opportunity to close out the series, which they now lead 3-2, in their own barn Saturday night. And the C’s, of course, are no strangers to collapsing just when you think they’ve got it all figured out.
One could argue the Celtics’ first win was about pride, not wanting to be swept with a trip to the NBA Finals on the line. The second certainly makes the conversation more interesting as Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets await the winner of the Eastern Conference finals. A third victory would really ramp up the pressure on the Heat, with a potential Game 7 taking place in Boston. And a fourth, well, that obviously would be historic.
The Celtics are starting to make believers (again) out of their skeptics, with their performance over the last two games more indicative of their overall talent level. Just don’t get ahead of yourself and pencil Boston into the NBA Finals just yet.
Bayless isn’t.
