Antoine Walker says the Heat did better against the Warriors than the Celtics

Former NBA star Antoine Walker believes the Miami Heat would certainly have defeated the Golden State Warriors had they replaced the Boston Celtics.

Antoine Walker considers himself a proud NBA graduate who began his pro career in 1996 with the Boston Celtics and won an NBA championship in 2006 with the Miami Heat.

As someone who has spent 12 years in the league among five different teams, Walker can view his past teams from a relative distance. And with that distance, a controversial perspective has come into focus: The Heat would have played better than the Celtics in the Finals, causing the Warriors to fall.

“I hate taking away from Golden State, but if you go back and watch the movie, Boston awarded Golden State that championship,” Walker said on the Locked On Heat podcast.

Though Walker follows a former team on a podcast supporting another former team, it has less to do with what Golden State accomplished and more to do with what the Celtics failed to accomplish. Walker is not alone in his analysis: many have been watching Boston lose momentum during the final as they fell behind a triumphant Golden State team.

It’s not unreasonable to imagine that if the Heat had had more depth they would have at least been able to last a Finals streak. But it hurts no less to see a Celtic family member making that observation — even with Walker removed twice.

Antoine Walker believes Heat would have beaten Warriors unlike Celtics

The biggest counterargument to Walker’s statement is that the Heat had effectively the same opportunity as the Celtics to play the Warriors, but Miami was defeated by Boston in the Eastern Conference Finals.

It went down to a close 3-3 series, but in the end Boston emerged victorious with a 100-96 win in Game 7.

To Walker’s credit, it was frustrating to see the heat recede in the postseason after the historical campaign set up by Jimmy Butler. Butler was at times the driving force for the entire team, which ultimately led to their elimination from the playoffs. Teammates Heat like Bam Adebayo, Tyler Herro and Kyle Lowry have been praised for their talents, but they came up short in the postseason. It’s hard not to wonder what a Heat Warriors Finals series would have been like if everyone in Miami was playing to their full potential.

The same, of course, goes for the Celtics, who won Game 1 and Game 3 before the Warriors ran away with the seven-game streak. Imagining anyone but the Warriors as champions is wishful thinking, but perhaps it can persuade both the Celtics and Heat to reconsider their October rosters.