The impossible

The Boston Celtics are knocking on the door of history. Down three games to none in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat, they completed their third consecutive win on Saturday night as Derrick White tipped home a missed shot to score a miraculous 104-103 victory.

The slate has been wiped clean; a 3-0 lead has become 3-3, which means it might as well be 0-0. The Eastern Conference’s representative in this year’s NBA Finals will be decided on Monday night in the TD Garden.

If you’ve been watching these games, you’ve already heard plenty about the significance of that 3-0 series lead. For three straight games now, the broadcasts have taken every opportunity to remind of us of the stakes: no team in NBA history has ever trailed three games to none and come back to win that series. The Celtics stand on the precipice of not only the NBA Finals, but history itself. They can put their names next to the impossible accomplishment — the thing nobody else has ever done.

The legacy at stake here goes deeper than that though. Setting aside the NBA, you only need one hand to count the teams in all of American sports history to complete a 3-0 comeback and score a series victory. The 2014 Los Angeles Kings are the most recent enshrinees, beating the San Jose Sharks in the first round of the NHL Playoffs. The NHL has three more entrants to contribute to that tally, including the 1942 Toronto Maple Leafs, who remarkably managed to accomplish the feat in the Stanley Cup Finals over the Detroit Red Wings.

Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images

Journeying into MLB history brings you to the obvious figurehead, a team that we’re likely to hear about quite a bit over the next couple days: the 2004 Boston Red Sox. The Celtics’ hometown colleagues are the only MLB franchise to accomplish the feat, and besides them, only the 2020 Houston Astros have ever managed to force a Game 7 (the MLB does use five-game series for its divisional round, limiting Game 7 opportunities).

First baseman and outfielder Kevin Millar famously told Boston Globe writer Dan Shaughnessy before Game 4 of that series, “don’t let us win today,” a refrain that the Celtics have taken to heart in this series. Expect to see a number of familiar faces from that Red Sox team in attendance for Monday’s Game 7.

Then, we have the valiant dead. The Celtics are the fourth NBA team to force a Game 7 in this scenario, with the other three — the 2003 Portland Trail Blazers, 1994 Denver Nuggets and 1951 New York Knicks — ultimately having fallen short in the climactic game. Adding in the NHL and MLB, the count of would-be 3-0 comebackers who fell short grows to nine. Among that list, you have the aforementioned 2020 Astros in the American League Championship Series (albeit at a neutral site due to the COVID-19 pandemic) and the 1945 Red Wings, who nearly flipped the script on the Maple Leafs in the Stanley Cup Finals, three years after the fact.

By way of addition, that gives us 14 teams. Fourteen teams in the entire history of American professional sports who stood where the Celtics now stand, regardless of where that led them. This team hopes to accomplish quite a bit more, to be sure, but their place in history is already assured. Statistically, a fan of a professional sports team could go their entire life without seeing this kind of accomplishment.

Photo by Tim Nwachukwu/Getty Images

In a way, it feels fitting that the Celtics would be here. This is what they do, after all. Their rise to championship contention has been paved with moments like these; Game 7 against the Heat will be their 14th elimination game of the past four postseasons, dating back to the Disney bubble. Of those, they’ve won 10, including four Game 7s and series comebacks against the Milwaukee Bucks and Philadelphia 76ers in the past two years.

These are the Cardiac Celtics, love them or hate them — perhaps both, sometimes. Just one year ago, in advance of, fittingly, a Game 7 against the Miami Heat in the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals, Derrick White offered the perfect summation: “I mean, we’re frustrated, but if it was easy, it wouldn’t be us.”

They find their backs against the wall more than anyone, but have found ways to thrive through all that adversity. If anything, the position we find them in now is the natural culmination of all those experiences. They fall behind, they play inconsistently and frustratingly, we question them, they come together and they win.

So here we stand, at the ultimate example. The Miami Heat, the team they’ve faced in three of the last four Eastern Conference Finals, once again stand in the way. Franchise superstar Jimmy Butler has once again shifted the landscape of the NBA Playoffs, guiding a lowly eight-seed through shocking wins over the top-seeded Bucks in the first round and the Knicks in the second. They’re a franchise with a core who knows how to win in the postseason just as much as these Celtics do, and they’re not about to roll over with their season on the line.

When it comes right down to it, here’s the thing. All this history, all these numbers and all these stories of the teams who did it or didn’t do it — none of it matters. The past sets our expectations, but it can’t inform the future. That’s the beauty of a Game 7. They’re the culmination of a long, hard-fought battle between two great teams, but the games that preceded them simply no longer matter. It’s the entire season in one game. Win or go home.

The Boston Celtics have completed the comeback. They countered three straight losses with three straight wins, and earned the right to put all six of those games in the past. All that’s left is 48 minutes of basketball.

Win and make history.

Win and accomplish the impossible.