Boston Celtics: 1 stud and 1 dud from C’s crushing Game 6 loss to Miami

The Boston Celtics had a chance to close out this best-of-seven Eastern Conference Finals series on their home floor against the Miami Heat Friday night and punch their ticket to the NBA Finals for the first time in over a decade.

Sadly, this did not turn out to be the case through 48 minutes of action.

The contest, just like the series as a whole, was a back and forth affair that saw many momentum shifts and crushing blows by both ball clubs. Ultimately, the Heat were the ones to land the final punch, coming away with a crucial 111-103 victory to force a do-or-die Game 7 back down in South Beach.

Jimmy Butler was simply on another stratosphere during the outing, as his killer mentality was on full display, finishing the night with a whopping 47 points, nine rebounds, eight assists, four steals, and one block on 55 percent shooting from the floor and 50 percent shooting from deep.

A man on a mission, right from the jump it was evident that the 6x All-Star wasn’t going to allow his team to be sent packing early, and, in the end, he, along with Kyle Lowry–who had a tremendous bounce-back game with 18 points and 10 assists–, managed to get the job done.

Miami’s defensive play was simply just too much for Boston to handle, particularly in the second half, as they held the likes of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown to a combined 14 points and four turnovers.

The C’s were also quite jumpy and incredibly sloppy on the defensive end, allowing the Heat to shoot 46 percent from the floor and 43 percent from deep while also committing 28 turnovers (Brown found himself even fouling out in the fourth) along the way.

This game saw a bevy of putrid plays and poor performances, though, despite the sour taste that it left, we would be remiss to not acknowledge the fact that there were some positive takeaways from the evening as well.

With this, we at HH would like to pinpoint 1 stud and 1 dud from the  C’s crushing Game 6 loss to Miami: