Basketball On The Internet.

From US Correspondent, BOB CRAVEN

LED by "point centre" Nikola Jokic and ably assisted by Jamal Murray, the Denver Nuggets swept away LeBron James and the LA Lakers in four straight games to win the Western Conference title and advance to the NBA Finals where Miami kept its appointment by today finally seeing off Boston.

In the Eastern Conference Final, it was do or die as the No. 1 seeded Boston Celtics played at home against the No. 8 seed Miami Heat in Game 7.

Boston was lucky to be here as it won Game 6 in Miami on Sunday thanks to an incredible finish that saw Derrick White score a rebound put-back with 0.1 seconds left in the game to win by a single point.

Boston became just the fifth team to lose the first three games of a playoff series, then claw its way back to tie the series and force a Game 7.

The four previous teams to start off 0-3 and make it to a Game 7 all lost it and the Celtics joined that crew. In 150 attempts to recover from 0-3 series deficits, the teams were 0-150.

All-time in the NBA, now 151 teams have started a series at 0-3 and all 151 have failed to advance, as tonight, on the road, Miami won all four quarters and rolled over the Celtics, 103-84.

Miami became just the second No. 8 seed to make it to the Finals, the first being the NY Knicks in 1999. 

If it beats Denver in the Finals, Miami will become the lowest seed ever to win, topping the No. 6 seeded champion Houston Rockets of 1995.

The game started ominously for Boston as star Jayson Tatum rolled his ankle on the first play and it obviously bothered him all night. 

The Celtics almost appeared to panic as they spent the rest of the game tossing up wayward 3-pointers from way downtown with little success. They shot 39 per cent for the game and only 9-of-42 (21.4 per cent) from behind the arc. 

Miami was much more efficient, shooting almost 49 per cent for the game and 50 per cent from deep.

The Heat were led by Jimmy Butler with 28 points, 7 boards, 6 assists and 3 steals.  Caleb Martin scored 26 points, grabbed 10 boards, and dished out 3 assists.  Miami only went to the free throw line six times, making five of those.

Now comes the big challenge.

Jokic is a player unlike almost anything the NBA has ever seen, and he's now taken the Nuggets somewhere they've never been ... well, not since they were a powerhouse in the ABA in the 70s.

Game 4 in LA was a thriller with the Nuggets pulling it out at the end 113-111 for the series-clinching win. 

Jokic had triple-doubles in three of the four games, passing Wilt Chamberlain's 1967 record for most triple-doubles in a postseason. 

One of those was the first playoff triple-double ever with 30 or more points and 20 or more rebounds. 

James tried hard for the Lakers, scoring 40 points in Game 4, including 31 in the first half, a new NBA playoff record for points in a half.

Game 1 of the Finals will be in Denver this coming Thursday, Friday morning in Oz.

Interestingly, Miami coach Erik Spoelstra, who has won two titles previously with Miami, is a local boy from my neck of the woods, having grown up mostly in Portland, Oregon, and playing at the U. of Portland. 

He was so confident Miami would win Game 7, despite having lost three in a row, that he booked the team flight out of Boston to Denver, instead of back to Miami.

IN other basketball news, Carmelo Anthony, 38, announced his retirement earlier this week. 

He finished his NBA career as the league's No.9 all-time scorer and was selected as one of the 75 greatest players in NBA history.

Anthony also was a 10-time All-Star, a past scoring champion, and a six-time All-NBA selection.  In his 19-year career, he averaged 22.5 points per game.  He played in 31 games for the US men's team in the Olympics, and his 37 points against Nigeria in the 2012 Games is the men's record for the US, as is his 10 three-pointers from that game.

WILT Chamberlain is one of the greatest players in basketball history and he holds dozens of NBA records. 

But perhaps his greatest all round game occurred a little over 55 years ago, and that effort will almost certainly never be touched. 

Near the end of the 1968 season, on March 18, 1968, he came up with what is reputed to be the only quintuple double in NBA history - 53 points, 32 rebounds, 14 assists, 24 blocks (!!), and 11 steals. 

I say "reputed to be" advisedly, as blocks and steals did not become officially tabulated stats until 1973.  Prior to that year, stats were either non-existent for those categories, were kept by a team's own stat keepers, or were tabulated by people going back to view filmed recordings of games that might have been televised.

ON a cultural note, those of us of a certain age were saddened earlier this week by the passing at 83 of the singing and dancing legend that was Anna Mae Bullock of Nutbush, Tennessee, also known as Tina Turner.

She lived for many years outside Zurich, Switzerland, with her second husband, and had been a Swiss citizen for a decade.

But her incredible story and her music will keep her as a citizen of the world forevermore.