Celtics Can Close it Out with Victory over Heat

Celtics Lead Series 3 games to 2 over the top seed Miami Heat

Celtics are 86-68 in closeout games. That includes a 48-19 record at home. This series shifts to Boston for Game 6.

Boston again has a 3-2 conference finals lead, this time over the top-seeded Miami Heat with Game 6 set for Friday.

There have been 333 times a best-of-seven NBA playoff series has been 3-2.

In NBA playoff history the team that led 3 to 2 has gone on to win 83.8% of the time. In the previous three years the trailing team has only won two times.

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One inhibiting factor for the Heat is that All Star Jimmy Butler is suffering from right knee inflammation and appears to be slower. He has score 19 points in the past two games and is 7 for 32 from the field.Kyle Lowry is hampered by a hamstring injury and Tyler Herro has a groin problem. The Heat are shooting 29%% in the conference finals as opposed to 38%, an NBA best, for the regular season from the 3-point line.

Jimmy Butler added this: “Honestly, it doesn’t matter, If I’m out there, I gotta do better. I gotta find a way to help us win and I haven’t been doing that. I’m fine, my knee is OK. I just gotta do better. It’s no excuse.”

The Celtics are anxious to get back to the Garden as Jaylen Brown added that they want to feed off the energy they know awaits them at the Garden. He simply put it this way, “This is a great opportunity. Leave everything on the floor. You don’t want any feelings of regret, Let’s come out Friday on our home floor and play the best version of basketball that we’ve played all season.

About the author– Tom Knuppel has been writing about baseball and sports for a few decades. As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan he began with the blog CardinalsGM. Tom is a member of the United Cardinals Bloggers and the Baseball Bloggers Alliance. He also maintains the History of Cardinals website. More recently he has been busy at KnupSolutions and the primary writer of many sports at KnupSports and adds content at Sports 2.0. Tom is a retired High School English and Speech teacher and has completed over one hundred sportsbook reviews. He also can be followed on Twitter at tknup.

Feel free to contact Tom at tknuppel@gmail.com