Miami Heat leaned on Ed Sheeran’s words after Game 6 loss

BOSTON — If the Miami Heat are able to shake off a heartbreaking Game 6 loss and win Game 7, they’ll have Ed Sheeran to thank. Sort of.

Apparently, after witnessing Derrick White hit a buzzer-beating putback in the final deciseconds of Saturday night’s game, the silence in the Heat locker room was broken by the dulcet tones of Ed Sheeran.

“That was one of the quietest locker rooms I’ve ever been in after a game,” ESPN’s Nick Friedell said on “Get Up” on Monday, ahead of Game 7. “Now you have to understand, Jimmy Butler usually has that speaker bumping in that room — win or lose. It was silent. And after about 10 or 15 minutes, Gabe Vincent walks over to his locker, and he hits play on his phone, and he plays ‘Life Goes On’ by Ed Sheeran. And certainly, that’s the mantra the Heat want to have going into Game 7 tonight. Push all the other stuff away, focus on the game.”

The song is about grief, written by Sheeran after the death of his friend. But some of the lyrics certainly translate for the Heat:

It hit like a train, I ran out of words
I got nothing to say, everything hurts
And I know love leads to pain
But memories serve our sweetest refrain

It’s not exactly the pump-up jam that typically fills professional sports locker rooms, but perhaps it helped the Heat move on quickly after they came up 0.1 seconds short of punching a ticket to the NBA Finals.