MIAMI - Not this time. After being thwarted on the doorstep of the NBA Finals on three occasions in the previous five seasons, the Boston Celtics have broken through.
Eastern Conference champions again - and now a chance at winning it all awaits.
Jayson Tatum led the way with 26 points to wrap up a series MVP honor, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart each added 24 and the Celtics beat the Miami Heat 100-96 on Sunday night to earn a berth in the NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors.
"This is amazing," Smart said. "We finally got over the hump."
It was Boston's first Game 7 win on another team's home floor since topping the Milwaukee Bucks for the 1974 NBA title. Technically, the Celtics were the away team when they beat the Toronto Raptors in a Game 7 two years ago, but that was at a neutral site in Florida where the NBA completed the 2019-20 season after shutting down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 24-year-old Tatum - wearing a purple-and-gold armband bearing the number "24" of late Los Angeles Lakers star Kobe Bryant, his favorite player - had lost two Eastern Conference finals in his career, while Brown and Smart were part of Boston's East finals losses in 2017, 2018 and 2020. And this one was slipping away, too, a frantic Miami run in the final moments casting what looked like a surefire Celtics win into serious doubt.
But they would hold on. Jimmy Butler - brilliant again for Miami - missed what would have been a go-ahead 3-pointer with 17 seconds left, and the Celtics never trailed.
On to San Francisco.
"To get over the hump with this group, it means everything," Tatum said.
Butler, who willed Miami into Game 7 by scoring 47 points on Friday in Boston, led with 35 points and Bam Adebayo added 25 for the Heat, who were down 11 with less than three minutes to go before trying one last rally.
An 9-0 run, capped by a 3-pointer from Max Strus with 51 seconds left, got the Heat within 98-96. They got no closer.
Boston is 2-0 in Game 7s in these playoffs, having ousted 2021 NBA champion Milwaukee in the East semis.
"It's just one of those really tough moments," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. "You can't prepare for it. ... It's one of the worst feelings into the world to address your locker room after a game like this."
Kyle Lowry scored 15 for the Heat. Grant Williams finished with 11 for the Celtics.
The notion of Boston playing for the NBA title would have been considered an unlikely proposition two or three months ago.
Ime Udoka's first season as coach of the Celtics was not without immense challenges. They got off to a 2-5 start, lost to Milwaukee on Christmas to fall below .500 and were still saddled with a losing record as recently as late January.
Through 50 games, the Celtics were 25-25. No team had that sort of record through 50 games and made the NBA Finals since 1981, when the Houston Rockets started 22-28 and wound up making the title series - where they fell to Boston.
Now the Celtics will look to do one better on those Rockets, who got into the playoffs at 40-42. Boston roared to life down the stretch and is still roaring.
The Celtics went 26-6 down the stretch of the regular season, and have shown an uncanny ability to bounce back. They're 13-1 after losses over the past four-plus months.
"The road that we took to get here, not a lot of people believed in us," said Tatum, the inaugural winner of the Larry Bird Trophy as the East finals MVP. "We took the toughest route."
Boston's advantage was 32-17 after one quarter - the largest ever by a road team after 12 minutes of a Game 7, four points bigger than Golden State's edge over the Lakers back in the 1977 playoffs - but the Heat never went completely away.
Miami ended the first half on an 11-2 run, the burst sparked by 3s from Strus and Butler before being capped by four free throws from Lowry in the final 29 seconds. Butler was up to 24 points at intermission, and Miami had gotten within 55-49 going into the third quarter.
Miami thought it had gotten within 56-54 when Strus rattled in a corner 3 early in the third. But the Celtics answered with a 9-1 run that turned out to be even worse for the Heat - the NBA replay center in Secaucus, New Jersey, decided that Strus had stepped out of bounds, his 3 came off the board while the game was going, and a 56-54 game became 65-52.
The Heat kept clawing back, all the way to the end. They just couldn't catch Boston.
"It's heartbreaking when it ends like this," Spoelstra said. "You certainly have to credit the Boston Celtics organization and their team and their coaching staff. ... We tip our hats off to them. They are a heck of a basketball team."
And now, the Celtics are off to the NBA Finals.
"Today was the biggest test," Brown said. "Not just of the year, but of our careers."
They passed.