The playoffs received a lot of criticism this season thanks to a lot of games ending in blowouts, but the Eastern Conference Finals went right down to the wire. It seemed like the series would also suffer from the issues with blowouts, but Game 6 and Game 7 were absolute thrillers, and the Heat were a Jimmy Butler three-pointer in the dying seconds of Game 7 away from making it back to the NBA Finals for the second time in 3 seasons.
However, he missed and sparked a fair bit of debate for taking the shot, and the Celtics went through. This came at the end of a stunning Miami Heat comeback after they erased a double-digit deficit with barely a couple of minutes left in the game, but they couldn’t see it through. And the game had been expected to go down to the wire, with the way Butler and the Celtics had performed throughout the series.
So much so that there were entire airplanes full of people tuning in to watch the game, as seen in a video shared by Bleacher Report. Fans loved that rows of screens just had the NBA Finals on, and it sparked a few reactions from the NBA community on Instagram:
“They were LOCKED IN to Game 7 mid-flight.”
“This is actually fire bruh.”
“I wanna see everyone’s reaction when Jimmy took that last shot.”
“The plane was gonna experience some turbulence if they was flying while butler missed that shot.”
“Probably a Miami flight.”
“This was my flight on Sunday after a 12hr delay.”
“Just picturing people yelling and one at the same time lol.”
“I thought we were gunna get flight attendant play by play there at the end.”
“Wth what airline is this?”
“Ball really is life, man.”
“They are more locked in than Chris Paul was these playoffs.”
“I was in the grocery store watching on my phone, but this is way more intense.”
Watching the game was worth it for any basketball fan, considering how close it came to being a truly historic result. As it was, the Celtics making it back to the NBA Finals for the first time in their new superstar’s career was a monumental moment, and well worth watching on a flight if someone is a fan of the beautiful game of basketball.
