Boston
This was the Heat team that has spent the past two seasons living with the heaviest burden in all of American sports, the relentless pressure of utmost expectations — much of it self-imposed — as well as the ill wishes of a nation eager to revel in Miami’s failure.
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This was the player, LeBron James, who more than anyone has dealt with the bitter brunt of all that.
And this was the night and the place that this team and this player would rise above it all or be crushed.
Well, the cream rose. And with it, the dream.
In a basketball arena that was a cauldron of hatred toward James on Thursday night, the NBA’s MVP was big enough and strong enough to lift a city 1,500 miles away, and to carry his team all the way back home — still alive, still chasing a championship.
"We’re not going to celebrate this win," James said afterward. "It’s a one-game series now."
That would be Game 7 in Miami on Saturday night, with the winners advancing to the NBA Finals to face Oklahoma City.
James would score 45 points Thursday — 30 in an almost surreally dominant first half — in the season-saving 98-79 triumph over the Boston Celtics that muted a torrent of vitriol. For a night, he was King James by decree more than just nickname. At one point, as the Celtics called a timeout to stem his assault, James stood and stared stone-faced up into the angry noise, betraying no emotion.
For a long time, he just stared, drinking it in, like water or oxygen. And he wasn’t blinking. Not right then. Not on this night.
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James’ points came on sharp 19-for-26 shooting, and he added 14 rebounds, the punctuation (thus far) on the most extraordinary individual season Miami has witnessed from one of its sports stars since Dan Marino’s record-setting 1984 for the Dolphins.
If "outstanding" is the sum of pressure times performance, James’ in-the-clutch Game 6 Thursday earned a piece of South Florida sports history. It was one of the most enormously impressive shows I have witnessed in half a lifetime doing this, by a player who is the best on earth at what he does.
Marino never did taste a championship here, of course.
James still could, thanks to, well, thanks to himself.
Now all the Heat has to do is do it again in Saturday’s Game 7 back home. And then keep doing it in the NBA Finals. That’s all.
This is the team that is not allowed to fail, led by the player who isn’t allowed to, either.
"We’re a no-excuse team," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra likes to say.
None asked. None abided.
Before this game that meant everything, in his typically grand, New Age eloquence, Spoelstra said of his team, "I love the group that we have. I really do. I love looking in their eyes and seeing what’s looking back at me. They love these moments."
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