Jimmy Butler and the Heat make good on their promise to Coco Gauff

PARIS -- Coco Gauff had a lot on her mind when she woke up Tuesday for her first match at Roland Garros. A finalist in Paris last year, the 19-year-old American was hours away from a high-pressure replay of the Auckland final in January against Spain's Rebeka Masarova. 

But Gauff wasn't thinking about that. She just wanted to know if the Miami Heat won Game 7.

"First thing I did this morning was look at the results," Gauff told reporters after her three-set win. "Very relieved. I kind of held my breath."

Indeed, the Delray Beach native saw the Heat did not ultimately squander their 3-0 lead over the Boston Celtics. They closed out the series with a 103-84 win in a winner-take-all Game 7 to advance to the NBA Finals. 

With the win, the Heat and their star forward Jimmy Butler made good on a promise made to Gauff a few months ago. Butler offered Gauff tickets to the Heat's last home game of the season and then DM'd her a few weeks later to offer her postseason tickets.

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"I said, I won't be here, I'll be in Madrid and then Rome and then France," Gauff said. "And then he said, 'OK, when we make the finals, let me know if your family wants some tickets.'"

Butler's confidence stayed with Gauff. 

"This was before we were even in the playoffs," Gauff said. "This is before we lost to the Hawks in the first play-in game. Everybody is like we have a 3 percent chance of making the finals, but when he sent me that, I knew we were making the finals because he didn't say 'If we make the finals,' he said 'When we make the finals.'

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"But I remember screenshotting it and sending it to my family and I was, like, 'Oh, we're going, we're going to the finals.'

"So that's my Jimmy Butler story. He pretty much said we were going to the finals before we even qualified for the playoffs, and I just really like that mentality of him."