After almost losing a 3-0 series lead, the Heat hold off the Celtics to go to the NBA Finals.

Caleb Martin and the Miami Heat defeated the Boston Celtics 103-84 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Monday night at TD Garden. Martin scored 26 points and hit 11-of-16 from the field in a rout of Boston. The Celtics' three-game winning streak was stopped, while the Heat avoided going down in NBA history.

After falling behind 0-3 in the series, the Celtics became only the fourth team in league history to force a Game 7. In 151 attempts, no team has ever recovered from that disadvantage and won the series.

The Heat are on their way to their second NBA Finals appearance in four years.

Despite the fact that the TD Garden was extremely noisy at the outset of the game, the Heat quickly shut down Boston. They went into the second quarter with a 7-point advantage after restricting the Celtics to just 15 points in the first quarter – their lowest-scoring first quarter of the season. In the first quarter, the Celtics shot 0 for 10 from beyond the arc as a team.

To make matters worse for Boston, Jayson Tatum rolled his left ankle badly on the game's first play. While he remained indoors, his ankle was plainly troubling him. He only attempted one field goal in the opening 12 minutes.

The Celtics lost to the Heat in a 19-point game, earning them a return trip to the NBA Finals for the first time since they lost to the Lakers in the 2020 bubble. Derrick White single-handedly mounted an 8-0 run for the Celtics in the opening minutes of the third period, but Martin hit a huge 3-pointer and fadeaway bucket from the short corner to get the Heat back to a double-digit lead. Butler finished with 28 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists in the win, and was named Eastern Conference finals MVP after the game.