HEAT CULTURE, HONED BY ERIK SPOELSTRA, IS AS REAL AS CELTICS SHAME

In an entitled, comfortable NBA, Miami has restored discipline and old-school values — with no greater example than a Game 7 stomping of a more talented Boston team that needs a new coach and identity

     He worked in “the tombs.” That’s grunt lingo for the video room of an NBA team, an even more thankless pit when the overlord is Pat Riley. The career journey of Erik Spoelstra could have been mock-blocked long ago in the age of superstar empowerment and ownership haste, when coaches are routinely fired only hiccups after winning championships. He’s 6 feet 1 among giants. He’s part-Filipino in a predominantly Black sport. To this day, people look at the Miami bench and ask, “Who’s the yoga instructor over there?”

     But never let it be said, more than a decade after winning a control struggle over a shoulder-bumping LeBron James and engineering two titles, that the demanding culture he has created with the patriarchal Riley isn’t the saving grace of a league that craves discipline, direction and development. Anyone remember accountability? Meticulous attention to detail? A resolute commitment to team first, self second? A place where mental health is honed, not tolerated as an excuse for jackass behavior? There is no more potent answer in sports, 2023 version, than what went down Monday night in Boston.

     That’s where Spoelstra and his kindred spirit in mad competitive intensity, Jimmy Butler, teamed with an inspiring cast of undrafted talent to shame the Celtics on their home floor. No one was bigger than Caleb Martin, whose name is called across the land now. There were Gabe Vincent and Duncan Robinson and Max Strus, thriving in the spirit of castoffs and grinders everywhere. All while Jaylen Brown was disappearing, unworthy of a $295-million offseason commitment, the symbol of a futile, misfiring, head-case jumble that couldn’t shoot the ball into the Charles River if standing 23 feet, nine inches away. All while the Celtics — after the sickly, green-faced humiliation of an elimination meltdown — are left to break up the toxic tandem of Brown and Jayson Tatum, a superstar only when he feels like it, and act quickly to demote overwhelmed head coach Joe Mazzulla while Monty Williams and Mike Budenholzer are still available, assuming either would want the inherent hassles.

     The losers should heed lessons in character and poise from the Heat, who treated Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals like a two-hour, no-stress, arrive-and-conquer business deal. Butler had joined Spoelstra in calling a shot: The Heat would win, even as a prematurely giddy New England was preparing for a 2004 reprise, another romantic team overcoming an 0-3 series deficit to make history. Last spring, after losing to the Celtics in the East finals, Butler had made the same guarantee when he declared, “Next year, we will have enough … and we’re going to get it done.” Not only were those promises fulfilled, they sent symbolic tremors through a basketball orbit that didn’t think core 20th-century values could exist amid spontaneous trade demands, hokey load management and foolish handgun-waving. Ja Morant, meet Heat Culture. Kyrie Irving, meet the thriving definition of overachievement. Kevin Durant, study what happens when you stay put and don’t hunt trophies. And LeBron? Stock the viewing room with popcorn in Beverly Hills and enjoy the Finals, where Spoelstra will try to win his third championship with only the second No. 8 seed to claim a conference title. And to think he wears athleisure garb, or something similar, on the sideline.

     “This is about an incredible group of men right here,’’ Spoelstra said after the 103-84 stomping. “We are the men in the arena with our dust, sweat and blood on our faces. And I think a lot of people can relate to this team because sometimes you have to suffer for the things you really want. This group has shown fortitude, when there are the inevitable letdowns and failures, to have that perseverance to pick yourself up, to have that collective spirit to keep on forging ahead until you accomplish what you want to.”

     Behind him, wearing “NBA Finals” t-shirts, his players nodded as respectful believers. And Butler? Playoff Jimmy had another shot to send, letting it echo across the front range of the Rocky Mountains, where the rested and skilled Denver Nuggets await Thursday night. “Nobody is satisfied. We haven’t done anything,” he said. “We don’t play just to win the Eastern Conference. We play to win the whole thing.”

     Will they? Probably not, I dare submit. Five thousand, two hundred and eighty feet of Colorado altitude aren’t good for an exhausted team that has played four games since the Nuggets swept James and the Lakers. But until tipoff, the Heat should be celebrated historically for persevering through injuries and prospering without anything close to a “superteam” roster. The irony is that 78-year-old Riley, still prominent in the stands with his godfather gaze, formed the original modern superteam in 2010, centered around James. That overhyped group won two titles, falling short of the multiple numbers predicted, and James has won only twice since fleeing back to Cleveland and then to a show-business whirl in Los Angeles. He won’t win another as he contemplates retirement, or so he says. Yet here is Spoelstra, still preaching “the beauty of the struggle,” still carrying the banner of Heat Culture long after LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh went separate ways.

     “We have some incredible competitors in that locker room,” Spoelstra said. “They love the challenge. They love putting themselves out there in front of everybody. Open to criticism. Open to everything. But to compete for it — that’s a beautiful thing. Just drop us off anywhere and compete for it. Put ourselves out there. We don’t care what the rest of the world is saying. We don’t care who is criticizing who. You’ve got to line up between these four lines and let’s figure this out.”

     On the parquet of TD Garden, Bill Russell’s No. 6 is superimposed in green by the baskets in both lanes. The legend, who emphasized team and character above all, would be gobsmacked by Heat Culture. And he’d be disgusted by the franchise he led to 11 rings. The Celtics had more talent than Miami. They had superstars in Tatum and Brown. They had home advantage in Game 7 in a town that came out roaring, Paul Pierce leading cheers with Robert Kraft, the owner who has won six Super Bowls with the Patriots. They were a season removed from nearly winning a championship. They’d looked like the superior team in winning three straight games. They were poised to become the first NBA team to win a playoff series after trailing 0-3. Instead, they became the 151st to lose.

     Instead, they are drowning in infamy, a team for the unhinged 2020s. When so many people in this world are working on psychological detritus, it makes sense that the Celtics made no sense during this series, navigating their usual contortions and perversions in something out of a “Succession” script. And just as Shiv and Tom Wambsgans knifed the Roy boys in the end, they succumbed to “fake-liking each other” and ongoing dysfunction that began last summer when their Alpha Male coach had an affair with a female team employee. Even when they were returning from the dead — so much for the Saturday night putback of Derrick White, who temporarily joined a procession of ghosts who’ve inhabited Causeway Street — there was a sense of fragility and distrust. Why did Al Horford, a veteran but still a working stuff, have to call an emergency Topgolf outing to help the team relax? Where was the head coach? And why did soft-spoken assistant coach Matt Reynolds, formerly the video coordinator, deliver the motivational speech before Game 4?

     Was Mazzulla just a mannequin? What were his verbal contributions? “Just win or die,” he said before Game 5. “Sometimes you have a bad week at work.”

     Now, they stumble into an ugly summer in Boston, the first American market where front-running NBA and NHL teams lost home Game 7s to No. 8 seeds in the same postseason. No one feels sorry for those entitled New Englanders, who thought they had an imperial right to 12 championships in the four major sports between February 2002 and February 2019. Without Tom Brady in Foxborough, without Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts in a Fenway Park austerity slowdown, and facing the prospect of Patrice Bergeron and other top players leaving the Bruins, the locals will vent their rage and despair toward the Celtics.

     Why did spurts of magic and serendipity, abundant after Tatum scored 51 points to eliminate Philadelphia, often vanish without warning? All eyes continue to be on Mazzulla, whose absence of previous experience as an NBA head coach was glaringly evident at the wrong times. Pure and simply, he didn’t have his players ready to play Game 7, just as they weren’t ready in the first three games. Did team boss Brad Stevens make the wrong hire after Ime Udoka was banned for his “inappropriate” intimate office relationship? Did owner Wyc Grousbeck overreact when he fired Udoka — who since has been hired by the delighted Houston Rockets with the league’s blessing — instead of suspending him for a few months? Did the front office screw up in swiftly removing the interim tag from Mazzulla, whose only previous head-coaching run came with Division II Fairmont State somewhere in West Virginia?

     Did the #MeToo movement bury a sports franchise for years? Or might a new coach, now that Nick Nurse has joined the rival 76ers and the Milwaukee Bucks have reloaded with Adrian Griffin, finally point Tatum, Brown and Marcus Smart in the right direction?

     “When we were down 3-0, the thing was: How do we want to be defined?” Mazzulla rationalized after the ass-kicking. “I thought they showed a lot of character by even getting to this point. … Guys cared. They gave it everything they had. That’s the most important thing to take from this. We didn’t win, which was our goal. So we failed in that regard, but it’s not because the guys didn’t have a sense of togetherness, character and who they are as people.”

    No one wants to hear that nonsense when 17 banners hang in the rafters. No one will have amnesia about Game 7. Fact is, Mazzulla was in over his head. Fact is, Tatum isn’t “one of the best basketball players in the world,” as he calls himself, when he stops making or even taking shots for mysterious stretches. Fact is, effort and chemistry and focus and leadership were lacking. Tatum finally spoke up at the wrong time on the wrong topic: He said after the loss that “it’s extremely important” to keep Brown with a lucrative extension. Does he realize that could impact whether the Celtics give Tatum a five-year, $318-million deal after next season? Or will Brown ask for a trade — perhaps to Golden State, which could unload Jordan Poole and Jonathan Kuminga amid reports general manager Bob Myers is stepping down — after mentioning the struggles he faces as a Black athlete in Boston?

     Heavy clouds hang over the Garden. “We failed. I failed and we let the whole city down,” Brown said. The Celtics had assumed they were taking the enchanted path of the Red Sox, 19 years earlier, who returned from an 0-3 hole to beat the damned Yankees before sweeping the World Series and slaying the Curse of the Bambino. Monday night, before Game 7, a hype video was played on the big screen, a 2004 Red Sox highlight followed by a 2023 Celtics highlight, on and on. They even had Kevin Millar record a message.

     Did they not realize Heat Culture was in the building? “They’re not for everybody, but neither are we,” Erik Spoelstra said of Game 7. “For the real competitors in the association, this is what you dream about.”

     They are dreams rooted in dust, sweat and blood, to quote him. And how refreshing to see not a trace of money or entitlement amid the seductive pleasures of South Beach, where LeBron once took his talents and didn’t have nearly this much fun.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.