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CLEVELAND – This is where it all started, nearly seven months ago to the day.
Back on Oct. 17, Boston took the court at Quicken Loans Arena for the first game of its season with championship aspirations and two new All-Stars in the fold. Minutes later, after All-Star acquisition Gordon Hayward suffered a season-ending injury, the team’s championship dreams were shattered.
Or so many thought.
Fast forward to May 19th and the Celtics are set to take the very same court tonight for Game 3 of the Eastern Finals with a 2-0 series lead in tow.
“It’s been a long year,” said Brad Stevens. “A lot has happened.”
Most notably, Boston lost Hayward on Opening Night and then lost Kyrie Irving for the season in mid-March. Most analysts believed that the C’s were out of the championship picture when Hayward went down, and nearly all analysts jumped on that train when Irving went down.
However, those analysts did not account for the rapid ascension of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, and the emergence of Terry Rozier as a dangerously talented starting point guard. Those three players, combined with the consistent output from veterans Aron Baynes, Al Horford, Marcus Morris and Marcus Smart, have led the Celtics to within two victories of their first Finals appearance since 2010.
The tragic event of Opening Night will never leave the minds of the Celtics, but they have moved on and are now concentrating on this moment, under the basketball spotlight, that they have rightfully earned.
“I think about Gordon, that replays in my mind,” said Horford, as he stood on the Quicken Loans Arena floor for the first time since that mid-October night. “And then that being the beginning of this journey for our group, and the ups and downs, and everything that we’ve been through. It’s a lot of positive things in regard to the group.”
One of those positives is the growth that the group experienced throughout the previous seven months. Tatum is at the forefront of that process.
“Just opening up your career, first game of the season, playing against LeBron, and everything that happened with the trades and everything like that,” Tatum recalled of his first professional game, “there was a lot of hype and attention around it.”
Tatum managed to play steadily amid the chaos that night, logging a double-double that consisted of 14 points and 10 rebounds. However, he shot just 41.7 percent from the field and finished third on the team in scoring.
Things certainly have changed since then. Tatum now he stands as Boston’s leading scorer during this magical postseason run with an average of 18.1 points per game on 46.1 percent shooting.
Tatum has developed at a high rate since Opening Night, but as he pointed out Saturday morning, his team as a whole has done so as well.
“I think we’re a lot tougher. We’re a lot more together,” he said of where the C’s stand now as compared to where they were on Oct. 17. “Obviously we’ve played 90-something games. That was the first game, so we were just still trying to figure each other out.”
They have figured it all out at this point.
With balanced scoring, impressive defense, and undeniable poise, the Celtics have climbed to within two wins of the NBA Finals. They have shocked the basketball world.
Jaylen Brown said it best Saturday morning when he commented to Celtics.com, “We’re young, we’re hungry, and we’re ready to go.”
All eyes will be on them tonight as they take the next step in their journey together. The Celtics have pushed Cleveland against the ropes heading into Game 3. Now they have a chance to begin their finishing combination on the East, right back where it all started in mid-October.
Quicken Loans Arena is where Boston’s championship aspirations began, where they evaporated in an instant, and where they’ll reappear again tonight.