June 9, 2012; Miami, FL, USA; Miami Heat power forward Chris Bosh (1) celebrates with the trophy after defeating the Boston Celtics in game seven of the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference finals at the American Airlines Arena. The Heat defeated the Celtics 101-88. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

The Boston Celtics’ season came to an end on Saturday, as they fell 101-88 to a Miami Heat team now on its way to the NBA Finals.

As he had all season long, league MVP LeBron James led the way for Miami, notching his eighth double-double of the playoffs with 31 points and 12 rebounds.  He played nearly the entire game, checking out as Dwyane Wade hit a pair of free throws to give the Heat their decisive 13-point lead with 28 seconds remaining.

Wade pitched in with 23 points, six rebounds and six assists in 44 minutes of work.

While James posted the most conspicuous stat line, the Heat received their most crucial contribution from Chris Bosh, who scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds in 31 minutes off the bench.  Bosh was wonderfully efficient; he missed only two of his 10 field goal attempts, and hit a career-high three three-pointers.  Remarkably, all but two of the shots he put up came from 16 feet and out.

It was Bosh’s hot hand that allowed Miami to spread the floor extra-wide late in the game, pulling the Celtics’ defenders out of the paint and opening up boulevards to the basket for LeBron James to attack with dribble drives.

Shane Battier provided critical support, scoring 12 points off four three-pointers and collecting four steals.  All nine of his shot attempts came from beyond the arc.

Despite the tremendous performances from Miami’s stars, the road to victory was a treacherous one.  The Celtics were razor-sharp in the first half.  They out-played the Heat in just about every facet of the game, hitting 53 percent of their shots and forcing 10 turnovers to build the seven-point lead they would carry into the third quarter.  Paul Pierce seemed on the verge of a vintage Paul Pierce game as he turned in 13 points off five-of-nine from the floor.  Ray Allen contributed 12 to the cause while Brandon Bass added 14, including 10 during a three-minute 14-3 run that put the Celtics up by 11 with 3:12 left in the half.

The 14-3 run was unexpected to say the least, given that it began only 30 seconds after Kevin Garnett checked out of the game, having been whistled for his third personal foul at the 7:08 mark.

Bass was the Celtics’ leading scorer through the first two quarters.  He had played so well, in fact, that he was selected by Doris Burke for the post-half interview.  We’re fairly certain this was the only time that this has happened this season.  Bass explained that his performance was the result of “just playing with a lot of energy, starting on the defensive end, [which] translates to good offense for me.”

Bass, Allen and Pierce also combined for six first-half steals.

The Heat slowly began to chip away at the Celtics’ lead mere minutes into the third quarter.  With 6:26 remaining, Shane Battier picked off a Ray Allen pass and outletted to Mario Chalmers, who found LeBron James for a driving lay-in, tying the game at 61 apiece.  Over the next ten-and-a-half minutes, there would be 16 lead changes and four ties.

The Celtics could not sustain the hot shooting they had enjoyed in the first half.  After hitting 58 percent of their shots in the second quarter, they connected on 41 percent in the third and 39 percent in the fourth.  The Heat, meanwhile, were unrelenting in their assault.  After making 50 percent of their first-half shots, they would knock down 53 percent in the second.

Compounding the ill-timed cooling of Boston’s hot hands was the sudden scarcity of Miami turnovers.  Boston had forced 10 in the first half, repeatedly exploiting them for transition runs, while coughing the ball up only six times themselves.  In quarters three and four, Miami protected the ball well, giving up just three turnovers while taking seven from the Celtics.

June 9, 2012; Miami, FL, USA; Boston Celtics small forward Paul Pierce (34) reacts on the bench after his fourth foul against the Miami Heat during the third quarter in game seven of the 2012 NBA Eastern Conference finals at the American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE

Miami took the lead for good off a driving one-handed slam from James with 7:58 left in the fourth that put the Heat up 83-82.  On the subsequent Heat possession — obtained via a Paul Pierce turnover — Bosh extended the lead to four with a corner three.  Ninety seconds later, James effectively put the game away, burying a 30-foot three-pointer over the outstretched hand of Brandon Bass as the shot clock approached its expiration.

The Celtics were unable to put together a response.  They would go on to miss six of their next seven shots, including an oh-for-five stretch that lasted out the most important four-and-a-half minutes of the game.  The drought ended with a Rajon Rondo three that was too little, too late.  Miami’s lead now stood at 11.  There were 39 seconds left to play.

Rondo was once again terrific for the Celtics, turning in his tenth career playoff triple-double with 22 points, 14 assists, and 10 rebounds.  Kevin Garnett added 14 points off 6-of-12 from the floor and seven rebounds.

The Heat now advance to the NBA Finals, where they will take on the Oklahoma City Thunder in a series that will surely come to be regarded as a landmark in the league’s history.   With Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen joining Tim Duncan, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki ,and Jason Kidd on the sidelines, the torch has officially been passed to the generation of stars who have already begun to mold the Association in their image, and will continue to do as the decade ensues.

Once we come to, we tear the sleeves off the Levi’s Vintage shirt we got last year from Unionmade (we always thought it would have worked better as a flannel vest anyway), fashion them into a bandage for our bleeding skull, pull the “2004″ box to the best-lit spot in the vault, take our keys to the packing tape sealing it shut, lift the flaps up, and start rooting.

In 2004, the Minnesota Timberwolves had a chance to close out their Western Conference Semifinal match-up with the Sacramento Kings in six games.  They botched it, wiping out big time in a 104-87  loss at ARCO Arena.  The Kings had played remarkably well, hitting 50 percent of their shots, while the Timberwolves had not, hitting just 41 percent.

The two teams returned to Minnesota for the elimination game.  From our write-up in our recent review of Kevin Garnett’s Top 5 Playoff Games:

Now facing elimination with All-Star point guard Sam Cassell dealing with a preposterous array of injuries (hip, back, a ruptured ear drum) that would eventually render him unplayable, the Timberwolves would need Garnett to push the limits of what he had to offer to their breaking point if they hoped to advance.  Garnett would do exactly that, scoring nearly 40 percent of his team’s points on a night when only four other Timberwolves managed to score at all.  He gathered 21 rebounds on a night when no one else on either team managed 10.  He blocked five shots, including one that he simply leapt up and snatched one-handed out of the air.  He beat the shot clock with a three-pointer, man – a three-pointer.  It was his 28^th birthday.

Also, before the game, he gave us what stands to this day as the greatest basketball-as-war metaphor ever conceived.

Other than Game Seven of the 2010 NBA Finals, tonight’s Game Seven — tonight’s game, period — is likely the weightiest of the Garnett era.  You know all the storylines by now: an improbable playoff run in the face of an almost comic rate of attrition, the series’ concluding dance with one of the great talents — and villains — the league has ever seen doubling as what could be the last hurrah for the Celtics as we know them.

It’s Game Seven.  It’s for all the marbles.  In 2004, KG stirred up a minor controversy by telling everyone that he’s loading up the pump plus several other firearms.  Though he hasn’t said anything like that out loud since, you can rest assured that he’ll be coming to this thing strapped like John Matrix.

June 7, 2012; Boston, MA, USA; Miami Heat forward LeBron James (6) drives the ball against Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo (9) during the third quarter of game six of the Eastern Conference finals of the 2012 NBA playoffs at TD Garden. Mandatory Credit: Greg M. Cooper-US PRESSWIRE

In the immortal words of Young Charles Bronson, “this ain’t ovah.”

The Miami Heat forced a Game 7 in the Eastern Conference Finals Thursday night, absolutely pummeling the Boston Celtics on their home floor by a score of 98-79.

LeBron James did the lion’s share of the pummeling, scoring 45 points while shooting 19-26 from the field (73.1 percent) and collecting 15 rebounds.  His 11 teammates combined for 53 points, hitting 18 of their 50 shots (36.0 percent) while grabbing 29 rebounds.

Rajon Rondo led the Celtics’ response, scoring a team-high 21 points and dishing out 10 of Boston’s 14 assists.  He also committed seven of their 13 turnovers.  Kevin Garnett and Brandon Bass had 12 points each, while Ray Allen chipped in 10.  Paul Pierce scored just nine points, misfiring on 14 of his 18 shot attempts while making only one trip to the free throw line.

Prior to the tip, Boston appeared to have Miami on the ropes, having won the series’ last three games, each in increasingly dramatic fashion.  After pounding the Heat for 58 points in the paint in a 101-91 Game Three victory, the Celtics took Game Four’s 93-91 overtime thriller in the Garden before overcoming a 13-point second-quarter deficit to win Game Five’s 94-90 South Beach Slugfest.

James almost single-handedly assured that the series would be played to the max limit.  In what will go down as one of the all-time dominating performances in a career filled with them, he scored 30 points in the first half, missing only two of his first 14 shots.  He was as dynamic as ever, scoring off post-ups, put-backs, transition slams, and jump shots from all areas of the floor that frequently scored in the top portion of the degree of difficulty scale.

Though the Celtics were able to find the basket in the early going – they hit exactly one half of their shot attempts through the first 24 minutes – nine turnovers and an inability to connect from downtown kept them firmly beneath LeBron’s boot.

Three-point shooting was an underrepresented facet of Miami’s Game Two overtime win.  The discussion around that one tended to center on the officiating, particularly on the 47-29 free throw attempt edge that the Heat enjoyed.  Lost in the noise was the fact that Miami actually made only five more free throws (31) than the Celtics did (26).  At the same time, they sank 10 three-pointers; the second most by a Celtics opponent this season.

In that game, the Celtics could muster only five three-point makes in response.  The 15-point advantage that the Heat got from a hot night of shooting from deep had a much larger impact on the game than the advantage gained through frequent trips to the line.  In the three games that followed – all Celtic wins – Boston outshot or neutralized Miami from downtown, making a total of 20 threes to their opponent’s 18.

On Thursday, Miami would shoot 7-16 from beyond the arc while Boston shot a mere 1-14.  Paul Pierce “led” the way in this department, missing every one of his team-high six three-point attempts.  It was the Celtics’ second-worst three-point shooting night of the season, ahead of only a pair of oh-fers in losses against Philadelphia in the regular season and Atlanta in Game One of the Conference Quarterfinals.

While six additional three-pointers from Boston – or six fewer from Miami – wouldn’t have won them the game, they certainly would have helped the Celtics hang around for much longer, impacting how the late minutes played out.

The Celtics trailed by 13 at the end of the first half, surely a bridgeable gap.  Unfortunately, a 36-percent shooting performance in the third quarter held them back by the same deficit going into the fourth.  Dwyane Wade helped LeBron close the game out by scoring eight of his 17 points in the final 12 minutes, keying a 15-3 run to kick off the start of the final period that put the game out of reach for good.

Unlike in the last three games, which saw significant offensive and defensive contributions from Marquis Daniels, Keyon Dooling, and Mickael Pietrus, the Celtics’ bench was a no-show.  A review of the box score will show that they kicked 15 points in to the effort, but will fail to tell you that all but two of those came prior to the 6:18 mark in the fourth quarter, when a Ryan Hollins dunk cut Miami’s lead from a game-high 25 to 23.  Shortly thereafter, Doc Rivers would empty his bench entirely, raising the white flag on a lost effort.

June 7, 2012; Boston, MA, USA; Boston Celtics starters on the bench as they take on the Miami Heat during the second half in game six of the Eastern Conference finals of the 2012 NBA playoffs at TD Garden. The Miami Heat defeated the Celtics 98-79. Mandatory Credit: David Butler II-US PRESSWIRE

Game Seven tips off in Miami this Saturday at 8:30 PM.  The Celtics have already come back from one seemingly inextricable hole.  It was just over a week ago that they trailed 2-0 in the series, having lost first in humbling and then in heartbreaking fashion.  To propel themselves to a Finals matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder, they’ll have to overcome a different kind of loss: a humiliating one.