Pop quiz: How many times has a No. 8 seed reached the NBA Finals? Just once before Monday night, when the Miami Heat defeated the Boston Celtics, 103-84, in Game 7 to (finally) end the Eastern Conference finals. That series wasn’t easy — Miami took a 3-0 series lead before Boston roared back with three straight wins — but the Heat controlled Game 7 to put Miami in the history books.
The East’s top seed a year ago, Miami navigated a far different postseason journey this time. It started with a loss to the Atlanta Hawks in the first play-in game but has since included series wins over the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks (despite Miami guard Tyler Herro breaking his hand in Game 1), fifth-seeded New York Knicks and second-seeded Celtics. Miami’s nearly unprecedented success has been nothing short of extraordinary, making this — by at least one measure — the most surprising playoff run in more than three decades.
Based on the opening series prices of each playoff round set by oddsmakers, the Heat was given less than a 1 percent chance to reach the NBA Finals: 109-1 odds, to be precise. That eclipses the unlikely run by the 1994-95 Houston Rockets, the only team since the playoffs were expanded to a 16-team format in 1984 to win the title without having home-court advantage in any of the four playoff rounds. The Rockets had an implied chance of 2.8 percent (or 34-1 odds) to reach the Finals that season, the lowest of the past 35 years until Miami’s surprising string of upsets.
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Since 1988, there have been 11 instances of an NBA team winning a series in which it was given a 20 percent chance or less of advancing, according to Sports Odds History. (In other words, in which the winning team had a series price of at least +400.) This year’s Heat has two of those: the win over the Bucks in the opening round and this victory over the Celtics. The win over the Bucks was the fifth-biggest upset in 35 years by that measure.
How has the Heat done it? Credit a combination of stellar performances by star Jimmy Butler, the second-half mastery of Coach Erik Spoelstra and precision shooting by the entire roster.
Butler’s scoring rate improved from 22.9 points per game during the regular season to 28.5 in the playoffs. He has produced the fourth-highest player efficiency rating (25.8) in the 2023 postseason and is second in win shares (3.0) and value over replacement player (+1.5 net points per 100 possessions). More importantly, his performance, after removing garbage time (the point of the game in which the outcome has effectively been decided), has made him the most valuable player in this postseason, according to Mike Beuoy’s win probability added metric, a measure of how a player changed the win probability for a team. Butler’s win probability added total of 2.8, according to Beuoy, is the highest of any player in the playoffs after accounting for his made and missed shots, fouls drawn, performance at the free throw line and turnovers.
One way to interpret this is that Butler is single-handedly responsible for four of the Heat’s 13 postseason victories (including the play-in games). For context, Stephen Curry led all players in win probability added during the Golden State Warriors’ title run last season (2.5 WPA), and Deandre Ayton (2.4 WPA) led the league in 2021, when the Phoenix Suns made the Finals. Only Kawhi Leonard (2.8 WPA during the 2019 playoffs) and LeBron James (3.4 in 2018 and 2.9 in 2014) have reached or exceeded that level in a single postseason over the past decade. Nikola Jokic leads the Denver Nuggets, Miami’s Finals opponent, with a WPA of 1.5.
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Spoelstra’s apparent second-half mastery also cannot be ignored. The Heat was outscored by 1.5 net points per 100 possessions during the second half of games during the regular season, when its roster was often weakened by injuries. But Miami is outscoring opponents by almost eight net points per 100 possessions in the second half in the postseason. And in the fourth quarter, Miami is outscoring opponents by 16.3 net points per 100 possessions, the best figure among this year’s playoff teams. The Nuggets have outscored opponents by 8.5 net points per 100 possessions in the second half and by 10.8 net points per 100 possessions in the fourth quarter.
Miami is also just shooting the ball better than it did in the regular season. The Heat’s effective field goal rate, which accounts for the fact that a three-point field goal is worth more than a two-point field goal, was 53 percent during the regular season. It is 55 percent in the playoffs, with the Heat making an NBA-best 39 percent of its shots from behind the arc. The biggest improvement has been above the break behind the three-point line; in other words, away from the corners. Miami is shooting better than 39 percent from that part of the court, compared to 34 percent during the regular season. The Heat is also attempting two more shots per game from that area. Only the Nuggets are shooting better from above the break than Miami this postseason.
Miami is also capitalizing more on its high-quality shots. According to the Synergy Sports shot quality metric, the Heat had an effective field goal rate of 73 percent on shots categorized in the 80th percentile or higher during the regular season. That has improved to 77 percent in the playoffs. Looked at another way, the Heat is scoring 0.10 more points per shot than expected on such high-quality attempts during the playoffs, compared to 0.02 fewer points per shot than expected on these attempts during the regular season.
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If the betting markets are any indication, the Heat’s miraculous run is still expected to end without a title. The SuperBook in Las Vegas opened the series odds with Denver Nuggets at -360 (bet $360 to win $100) and moved the price to -400 less than a half-hour later. Those odds imply a 76 percent chance Denver wins its first championship. Then again, the Heat wasn’t supposed to get this far.
“I think that’s the nature of this team that I think a lot of people respect, because we’ve had our fair share of setbacks and disappointments, frustration, but we just keep on picking ourselves up and getting on to the next fight,” Spoelstra said.
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