The Celtics beat the Heat and everything is fine

Are the Celtics playing the Heat or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, because apparently the only thing we had to fear was fear itself.

(ba-dum… CRASH)

I wouldn’t call that a tense game, nor would I call it a close one. In fact, I wouldn’t even really call that much of a game. It was more like an exhibition, with two basketball teams putting on an educational demonstration of what happens when the Miami Heat without Jimmy Butler come into contact with a healthy Celtics team stacked to Latvia and back with top-end talent.

As with any educational presentation, there had to be a twist that the second-grade class wasn’t expecting. This came when the Heat cut the Celtics’ once-34 point lead to 14 after Boston decided they were done with this snooze fest with about eight minutes left in the fourth quarter. That was as close as it got, and history will forget the exasperated groans of TD Garden when Delon Wright hit back-to-back threes to force a Celtics timeout in a game that was supposed to already be over.

Don’t worry about any of the X’s, O’s, or any other letters of this play for now. Just listen to the crowd when he hits the shot. You can clearly hear someone—or perhaps a few people—shout “NO!” complimented by a smattering of disapproving chatter. But the “NO!” wasn’t an expression of fear—like the “noooooo!” from a horror movie when the slasher closes in with their machete—but rather an exclamation of rejection.

Whoever shouted that was answering the question the Celtics players seemed to be asking: “should we blow this game right now?” Encased in that cry was a complex message: “no, Celtics, you shouldn’t blow this game. In fact, should you blow this game, it would be the greatest comeback in NBA history. So please don’t.”

Those emotions were understandable, and I was feeling them myself. But the Celtics never really were at risk of blowing that game, and the Heat’s foray into the lead should probably be remembered as a flash in the pan invited by a Celtics team that had nine of their ten toes already back home and in bed. If you ever find yourself freaking out about the Celtics blowing a lead late in a game, here’s a quick math exercise I like to do to calm myself down.

With 2 minutes and 10 seconds left, the Heat had the ball down by 14. Barring four-point plays, the minimum number of possessions needed to score 14 points is five. Let’s assume perfect conditions—which never happen—and that…