Miami Heat in familiar all-or-nothing spot vs Boston Celtics

BOSTON – The external expectation is an air of resignation.

The Miami Heat, after all, are in danger of becoming the first team to lose a series among the 151 in NBA history that have held a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven matchup.

They also are a team devastated by a game-winning Boston Celtics putback basket with one-tenth of a second remaining in Saturday night’s 104-103 Game 6 loss that set up Monday’s winner-take-all Game 7 in the Eastern Conference finals at TD Garden.

But that, those on the inside insist, misses the point.

The air of resignation comes from what predated – by minutes, hours, days, weeks – Derrick White’s Saturday tip lay-in at a suddenly hushed Kaseya Center.

This is who the 2022-23 Heat are, have been, and, frankly, hope to continue to be: a team of every last breath, one somehow still breathing.

“I mean, this group’s pretty much been here before. We’re just running it back,” guard Gabe Vincent said of again swimming against the current in desperate straits. “It’s almost like it’s supposed to be this way.”

On April 14, it was a fourth-quarter comeback in a winner-take-all play-in game against the Chicago Bulls. In the first round of the playoffs,  it was a pair of fourth-quarter, double-digit rallies to oust the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks. In the next round, it was overcoming New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson morphing into Michael Jordan.

And now this, from up 3-0 against the Celtics to an against-all-odds last chance in hostile territory, with the carrot of a trip to the NBA Finals starting Thursday on the road against the Western Conference champion Denver Nuggets.

Heat hope did not end Saturday . . . it just felt that way in a moment frozen in time.

“Part of the journey,” forward Duncan Robinson said, reiterating, “part of the journey.”

A journey harrowing and exhilarating, sometimes in the same game, sometimes in the same minute, as was the case Saturday after three Jimmy Butler free throws put the Heat up one with 3 seconds to play.

“You’re going to get the same test until you pass it, I swear. We were in this same position last year,” Butler said, the difference being last year the Heat’s Game 7 loss to the Celtics in the East finals was in Miami. “We can do it. I know that we will do it. We’ve got to go on the road and win in a very, very, very tough environment.

“We have got to go on the road and do something special. But we’ve got a special group, so why not it be us?”