Heat players talk bouncing back, making history with Finals comeback
MIAMI — Kevin Love has been here before, down 3-1 in the NBA Finals and staring up at a seemingly invincible foe. Yet there he was, a couple of improbable games later, dancing with Stephen Curry out at the arc and contesting a shot that missed and sealed the Cavaliers’ historic comeback and title in 2016.
“We know that anything can happen. It has been done before, in a Conference Final and Final, I have been part of it before,” Love said after a Heat Game 4 loss on their home court that felt like a punch to the gut. “You really just have to take it one possession at a time. Forget the game. It’s just one possession, one quarter, half to half. Just get it done by any means necessary and figure the rest out.”
The Heat locker room was quiet after Game 4. With good reason. The Heat just had dropped two games at home, and in the second one of those they held Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray in relative check — with Jokić spending 5:15 of the heart of the fourth quarter on the bench due to foul trouble – and it didn’t matter. It felt like a game Miami had to have, but Aaron Gordon and Bruce Brown grabbed it for Denver. Miami looked like a team in trouble.
“I told the guys, feel whatever you want to feel tonight. It’s fine,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “You probably shouldn’t sleep tonight any amount of time. I don’t think anybody will. We have an incredibly competitive group. We’ve done everything the hard way, and that’s the way it’s going to have to be done right now, again.
“All we are going to focus on is getting this thing back to the 305. Get this thing back to Miami. And things can shift very quickly. It’s going to be a gnarly game in Denver that is built for the competitors that we have in our locker room.”
Resilience and relentlessness have been the Heat hallmarks this postseason, but those qualities are about to be tested like never before.
“We’ve seen a team come back from 3-0 firsthand,” Bam Adebayo said, referencing the Celtics near comeback on the Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals (Miami won Game 7 in Boston). “So we just have to believe, and one game at a time.”
There was a 3-1 comeback in the 2016 NBA Finals, when the Cavaliers stormed back on Curry’s Warriors. However, that comeback required a cocktail of events to be shaken together: Draymond Green‘s suspension for Game 5 after kicking LeBron James in the groin, Golden State center and defensive anchor Andrew Bogut getting injured and missing the final games, LeBron playing at his absolute peak, and a legendary Kyrie Irving bucket.
Can Miami replicate that?
“It’s one game at a time. Now we are in a must-win situation every single game, which we’re capable of,” Jimmy Butler said. “Some correctible things we’ve got to do, but it’s not impossible. We’ve got to go out there and do it. We’ve got three to get.”
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Heat players talk bouncing back, making history with Finals comeback originally appeared on NBCSports.com
