Alright, after a successful “pilot” article, I am back for more heart rate talk after the Miami Heat ripped mine straight out of my chest.
It’s only Game 2, can you believe it?
Wednesday night was basically the “this is why we play” for people (me) who monitor their heart rate while watching playoff basketball.
The Celtics were awful. After ripping off a 37-4 record at TD Garden in the regular season, they once again let the Heat come in and steal a game in the postseason.
Let’s take a look at how it all happened.
Of course, you know, since they lost, this game didn’t go quite like Sunday’s did. Boston traded punches with Miami early on, but Jayson Tatum was looking strong at the start. His early onslaught calmed me from 68 beats per minute down to just 54.
The Heat then made their presence known, started drilling all of the threes, and ripped off a 15-6 run. While I watched what I didn’t realize was already the beginning of the end, my heart jumped up to 68 bpm again. By the end of the quarter, Boston trailed, and I was still tense at 63 bpm.
To their credit, the Celtics fought and regained their footing at the beginning of the second. A nice steal by Sam Hauser led the basketball gods to reward him with a corner three and me with a drop-down to 58 bpm.
Miami continued to rain down threes, with Caleb Martin and Tyler Herro bumping me up to 68 bpm and then 71 bpm, respectively.
Things were looking out of hand for the Cs, but Jaylen Brown stepped up and finished the first half on a heater. His 11 points in the final minute-and-a-half claimed me down to 63 bpm.
Boston stumbled out of the gate in the second half. They committed a 24-second violation, gave up some more threes, and then went down double-digits, while I went up to 82 bpm.
Again, the Celtics fought, cut it back down to five, and then shot themselves in the foot. Tatum smoked a pair of free throws in the fourth quarter and got me pumping at 85 bpm. Then Bam Adebayo made one of the billion mid-range jumpers that fell for him tonight and I hit a then-playoff-high 90 bpm.
We got our official playoff-high of 104 bpm minutes later when the Cs did the unthinkable. They left Martin, the king of Heat black magic voodoo, wide open for his fifth three of the night.
In my Game 1 recap, I predicted that I’d hit triple-digits if the Celtics messed around and gave the Heat a bit of unnecessary hope.
Unfortunately, we got to find out that I was right in Game 2.
I’ll be rolling with the heart monitor threads over on Twitter throughout the playoffs. So, if you thought this was funny, follow me over there @SamLaFranceNBA for the latest on my ticker.
