Bam Adebayo is the last and greatest hero of Game 1

In a furious back-and-forth game full of clutch performances, Bam Adebayo made himself the hero with an epic defensive play to save Game 1.

Working on a game story is a weird, unsettling task. The job is to braid together the most meaningful threads of a basketball game into a single narrative retelling. But the relative importance of each of those threads changes in real-time. That strategic advantage that defined the first quarter has disappeared by the third, with some other variable rising to assert its dominance. The final seconds of a game can determine the outcome and, in doing so, reframe everything that came before them.

For the final five minutes of the fourth quarter and the brief span of overtime in Game 1, the Celtics and Heat took turns holding leads, momentum and narrative primacy. Each offered forth their own heroes, bidding to write their own endings to this minor legend.

Kemba Walker gave the Celtics a five-point lead with an absurd, falling finish in the lane and just over a minute left. Seven seconds later, Tyler Herro closed the gap with brassy 3-pointer. Then Jimmy Butler drained a contested corner 3. The Heat lead by one. This is their story. Butler is the hero, pulling the best from his teammates, leading by example and willing his way to victory.

Then an off-ball foul and a game-tying free throw for Jayson Tatum. Overtime and a quick four-point lead for the Celtics, Tatum to the line again and Walker, finally cooking, with another step-back jumper. A minute later the Heat hold momentum again, Jae Crowder answering the call but hitting a disrespectfully wide-open 3-pointer and Herro hitting Adebayo on the run-out for a dunk. Walker, finally getting the chance to be an NBA playoff hero, gives the Celtics a lead with another step-back. Butler takes it back with muscle and mulish stubbornness.

This was Kemba Walker’s story, and everyone else was just a greek chorus. Then it was Butler’s, with Tatum and Walker as heroic foils, rising action and climax incarnate. And then this happened.

That thing I’m talking about, the metronome of control swinging wildly back-and-forth, the basketball gods literally flipping coins and watching as they spin on end, waiting to see which way they fall. It’s all here, splaying out in seconds. It’s worth watching again.

Tatum is about to dunk his way to victory, the most emphatic and ludicrously unlikely way to finish a game. Posters like this almost always come with a free throw, but even if he somehow doesn’t get the call, he gets to run it back in double-overtime with the basketball soul of Adebayo as his door prize.

But he gets neither the foul or the dunk. Adebayo meets him at the apex and swats it away — the Celtics win, the epic highlight, the legacy-building clutch play. It’s a block for the ages, for all the marbles, a block that instantly pushes Boston’s win probability to zero point zero.

And so, it turns out, Game 1 was Adebayo’s story all along.