Are the Miami Heat frustrating the Boston Celtics into implosion?

The Miami Heat are up 2-0 in their Eastern Conference Finals series and largely because of Bam Adebayo. He’s evolving before our very eyes.

The Miami Heat are sitting comfortably, not complacently, in the Eastern Conference Finals. With a 2-0 lead to nurse and a Boston Celtics team falling apart at the seams, things are going just the way that Erik Spoelstra, Pat Riley, and Jimmy Butler planned them.

After the Miami Heat’s Game 2 win, reports started to surface about a bit of friction in the Celtics locker room. Here is a report from Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe.

It was a series of tweets. Here they are in blockquote form, chronologically.

"Marcus Smart is screaming in the #Celtics locker room and there is a bunch of arguing going on. Smart comes out say “y’all on that bullshit!” Team is imploding. Smart is in bathroom and there is still screaming coming from locker room. -9:45pmSmart wasn’t the only one yelling. There were definitely items thrown and a lot of yelling. #Celtics -9:48pmArgument is continuing. Locker room still closed. #Celtics -9:51pmBeen outside a bunch of locker rooms in my days. That’s was as raucous as I’ve ever heard. #Celtics -9:54pmSome players, including Smart, have left. Smart declined to speak with media. #Celtics -10:04pmThe #Celtics will NOT practice tomorrow -10:27pm"

Well, that seems quite eventful.

The Miami Heat are up 2-0 in the Conference Finals over the Celtics. The C’s are showing chinks in their armor.

As unfortunate as it is that the Boston Celtics were arguing at all and amongst themselves as a unit, this can affect the Miami Heat in three specific ways.

The Miami Heat can hear this, buy into an “implosion”, potentially causing them to let up off the gas. That isn’t the Miami Heat way though, so I am sure Coach Spo won’t let them fall victim to that.

They can hear this and think that the Boston Celtics will come out hungrier now. This is after in-fighting and then the world subsequently hearing about said in-fighting.

That is the kind and enough motivation to say that “the world is against you” and that you have something to prove. It can be scary going up against a team in that position.

The Miami Heat aren’t buying the hype though. They were built for moments and games like this.

The likeliest outcome of it all is this, the Miami Heat remain unchanged. According to everything we have ever heard about Coach Spo and Jimmy Butler, it doesn’t matter what’s going on anywhere else.

They are hyper-focused on what’s going on in their locker room. However, it doesn’t mean that the Miami Heat haven’t heard and won’t try to exploit something if it shows itself.

This Boston Celtics team is on the ropes. The Miami Heat seemingly have their number.

This isn’t saying that the series is over, but what it is saying is that if there is to be a clear favorite for the remainder of the series, it has to be the Miami Heat. They’ve not only displayed that they can beat the Celtics two games in a row in a playoff setting, but they have also proved that they can come back from double digits in each game to do it if need be.

Of course, we would rather have them not make it so hard on themselves, but as long as they get the victory.

Either way though, they appear to be in the minds and heads of their opponents. So while we can’t say that the Miami Heat are frustrating the C’s into total implosion, they are closer to that than they have been all season and possibly Brad Stevenson’s entire Celtics tenure.