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ATLANTA – The last time the Boston Celtics were in Atlanta, they were bruised, battered, and down two games to none in a best-of-seven series.
Oh, how quickly things have changed.
The C’s are back in town, with confidence in tow, to take on the Hawks in tonight’s Game 5 that will break a 2-2 series tie and put one of these teams on the verge of advancing to the second round of the Playoffs.
“After Game 2 everybody was a little bit down, just because we knew we weren’t playing at our best and we didn’t know at the time how to stop those guys. They were coming out real hot,” said Marcus Smart, who was a key driving force during Boston’s Game 4 win. “But now, coming back, we have a different mindset than we had.”
Truth be told, the Celtics have a different team than they had during Game 2. That fateful contest was their first without the services of both Avery Bradley and Kelly Olynyk, two of their top shooters and rotational players. Their absences were significant, and the C’s needed to quickly figure out how to fill their voids.
Game 2 wasn’t pretty, as Boston fell behind by as many as 23 and eventually fell 89-72, but it was the beginning of an adjustment process that has come full circle and tied the series at two games apiece.
“You have to adjust, and we used that game to adjust,” said Jae Crowder. “It sucks that we have to do it on the fly, but it’s part of playoff basketball and the injuries and stuff. I feel like we had to adjust and we’ve tried to figure it out.”
And they have. The Celtics rattled off two straight wins at home to tie the series, and they did so with a much-improved offense. They nailed 22 3-pointers during Games 3 and 4 and shot 44.3 percent from the field. Those numbers were up from 16 total 3s and 34.2 percent shooting over the first two games.
“I think our space has gotten a lot better, along with our pace. We made a lot of adjustments,” said Evan Turner, who started Games 3 and 4 after coming off the bench during Game 2. “I think guys have gotten better at zipping the ball around and guys have stepped up and made shots as well. I think that it has been at a different rate than it was the first couple of games.”
It would be difficult to overstate the amount of adjustments this team has been forced to make on the fly over the last week. Anyone who has watched the Celtics this season understands how important both Bradley and Olynyk have been to the team at both ends of the court. Bradley only missed six games this season, so playing without him was quite foreign to this team.
Working in Boston’s favor, however, is the fact that making on-the-fly adjustments is one of this team’s greatest strengths, as Brad Stevens highlighted before Tuesday afternoon’s shootaround at Philips Arena.
“They’re good at seeing things and talking about things at halftime,” said Stevens, “or talking about things in the middle of quarters or whatever the case may be, to be able to adjust to try to put a Band-Aid on something that’s hurting us, or to try to take advantage of something that we haven’t tried yet.
“A lot of things, though – and this is why the idea of continuity is so important – a lot of those things you’ve done at one time or another now in the last 16 months together.”
Stevens refers to such continuity as “corporate knowledge.” Boston, which has had the same core together for the last 14-16 months, has plenty of it. That’s the greatest reason why tonight’s game is even being played.
The Celtics adjusted on the fly over the last three games and have gotten better and better and better. Now they’re back in Atlanta for tonight’s Game 5, a contest that could put them on the brink of advancing to the second round for the first time since 2012.