I'm late to the party, but I know what I just saw.

The Heat really are as good as they thought they were.

The playoffs aren't over by any means.  There are still several at least formidable teams, led by a Mavericks squad that is legitimately dangerous.  That said, I think we just watched the championship series.  And until proven otherwise, in my eyes the Miami Heat are the champions in waiting.

LeBron James is the best player in the NBA, and Dwyane Wade is right there on his heels.  Of course, that isn't news to me...I'd have readily agreed to that last summer.  But some time between last summer and last night, the Heat stopped being two ultra talented individuals plus some other guys and turned into a team.  And that is very bad for the rest of the NBA.

My stance all along was that the Celtics and Lakers were the two teams in the league with both the talent and, more importantly, the team make-up to give this iteration of the Heat fits.  I thought the Lakers were just too big, and that the Celtics had the combination of size and a dominating point guard that the Heat wouldn't be able to combat.  We'll never know about the Lakers, but the Heat were able to wear the Celtics down in a way that I didn't expect.

"I'm not the man I once was, but I'm all the man, once, that I ever was."

When I was little, my dad and his friends used to use that quote all the time and laugh about it as they got older.  And I was reminded of it as I watched this series play out.  The Celtics were either tied or had the lead in the final minutes of four of the five games in the series, but in the end they just didn't have enough to sustain it.  LeBron and Wade were like a wave...relentless and unceasing.  In order to dam the waves, the Celtics needed to play at their absolute peak.  They needed to be all of the men that they ONCE were.  And, to their credit, each of them reached down and found that man as they could.  The youngster, Rajon Rondo proved he would play with one arm.  Paul Pierce had his game 3.  Ray Allen had his moments.  Kevin Garnett reached into the well and pulled out one vintage, turn-back-the-clock 30/20 effort and then found it again for a quarter in game 4.

But they just couldn't sustain it.  Not this year.  They could be that man ONCE...they just couldn't be that man consistently.  That's where age and injury really seemed to tell the story.  My lasting impression from this series comes from the sideline snapshots...Rondo and Jermaine O'Neal laying on the sideline getting treatment on their backs...Shaq in a suit...KG trying to surreptitiously rub his knee without anyone noticing.  It's really different, to me, than the way the 2010 season ended.  The 2010 Celtics really were as good or better than the 2010 Lakers, so it was just a coin flip that they came up short.  But after watching this series, at this time...the 2011 Celtics just weren't as good as the 2011 Heat.  And it showed.

I wrote that this Celtics/Heat series was a legacy-defining moment.  Well, the Heat did their part.  They vanquished their giant.  Now, they better get their focus back and finish this out.  Because it would be a shame for them to prove that they really are this good, then not get the big ring that goes with it.