Talking trash to Jimmy Butler? That was never going to work out well, Grant Williams.
When this weird Celtics season is put on the autopsy table at some point soon — maybe really soon, given the way they’ve played through two games of the Eastern Conference finals — a big pin will go in the image of Williams and Butler, nose-to-cheek, with 6:22 remaining in Game 2.
At that moment, the Celtics led 96-87. They were doing the job they needed to do, on track to even the series after their inexplicably lousy performance in Game 1. And then?
What else did Williams think would happen after poking the bear?
Possession by possession, dribble by dribble, shot by shot, Butler and the Miami Heat spent the next six minutes psychologically dismantling the Celtics until the final second ticked away in a 111-105 win.
And now, with a 2-0 series lead heading home, Miami is heavily favored to reach the NBA Finals with a team that didn’t figure to make it out of the first round.
In what was supposed to be the most competitive Eastern Conference playoffs in recent memory, it’s the No. 8 seed that stands at the precipice of taking out Milwaukee, New York and Boston.
Sure, the Heat organization has an incredible pedigree. But given what this team had done in the regular season — or more accurately hadn’t done — this playoff run is almost incomprehensible. Keep in mind, Miami was actually supposed to be the No. 7 seed but got hammered at home by the Atlanta Hawks in the play-in tournament.
That game took place April 11. The next day, the national discourse surrounding the Heat focused largely on whether this iteration built around Butler, with an aging Kyle Lowry and a bunch of no-name role players, was still viable.
Would Miami be pivoting to a rebuild? Would it have anything to offer for Damian Lillard or another big star that might come on the trade market? Was it time to trade one of its key younger players like Bam Adebayo or Tyler Herro?
Five weeks later, it’s fair to say the outlook is a lot different.
In retrospect, it was a bit of good fortune for Miami to land at the No. 8 seed after Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo got injured in Game 1. Then the Heat drew the Knicks, a team with significantly less playoff experience.
But doing this in Boston shows it wasn’t a fluke. They’re just mentally tougher and more purposeful than the Celtics. And as a result, Miami is playing with the confidence of a 1 seed while the Celtics crumble like imposters under even a little bit of pressure.
It’s so strange, too, because Boston has been in far too many big playoff games to lose on toughness and mental mistakes. And yet the gap with Miami in those areas was glaring.
That’s a credit to Butler. At a point in the game when Miami was just a handful of possessions from being too far behind to come back, he drew inspiration from his confrontation with Williams.
Though he had been taken out of the rotation for much of the playoffs by coach Joe Mazzulla, Williams played quite well when called upon Friday night and was a big part of why Boston got some separation on the scoreboard early in the fourth quarter.
But Williams’ urge to trash talk on his way by Butler after hitting a 3-pointer with 6:37 left was just not a very smart compulsion to act on. It carried all the way down the floor until a foul after Butler scored 1-on-1, ending with Butler appearing to scream “Let’s go!” at him once they were separated.
It wasn’t Williams’ fault that the Celtics lost. But the game undeniably turned right then. Butler went at Williams again the next time down the floor and scored, and then he did it again on jump shots with 2:58 and 2:33 remaining to give Miami the lead. The bear had thoroughly been poked.
Butler has been the best player in the playoffs this year, bar none. Another 27 points on Friday, making 12-of-25 shots, is only maybe his fourth- or fifth-best game of the postseason. That’s how amazing he’s been.
But that’s not the only difference between the way the Heat are rolling through the playoffs and how they played in the second half of the season when their offense was one of the worst in the league.
For one thing, Miami is just shooting the ball better — 37.5 percent from three in the playoffs vs. 34.4 percent in the regular season — but the big surprise is how well its role players have performed. The Heat are essentially giving starters’ minutes to three guys who went undrafted, and all of them are holding up beyond imagination.
Gabe Vincent hit the shot Friday night that put the game out of reach. Max Strus remains a huge force of gravity because of his shooting capability. And Caleb Martin, who has been insanely good in the playoffs, did it again by making 11-of-16 field goals for 25 points.
Had the Heat lost Game 2, they still would have been in excellent shape in the series. But now, they’re in an incomprehensibly good position because Butler smelled weakness and pounced.
Mazzulla, a first-year head coach, was far too slow to adjust by leaving defenders — Williams, mostly — to guard Butler 1-on-1 in the crucial fourth quarter minutes. Meanwhile, the Heat were running two or three defenders at Jayson Tatum and forcing him to give it up.
Guess which team got good shots on crucial fourth quarter possessions and which one got sped up into turnovers and bad shots? Assuming this series continues on a similar trajectory, that is certainly going to be a topic that hounds Mazzulla and the Celtics for another calendar year.
Then again, are we talking about a different series if Williams never opens his mouth and hands Butler a reason to get fired up again about a game that was slipping away? We’ll never know. But if the Heat end up winning a title, they may want to send him a thank-you card.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken
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