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The Boston Celtics have been here before: down 3-2 in a best-of-seven series, searching for a way to climb out on top.
After dropping a tie-breaking Game 5 to the Golden State Warriors Monday night, the C’s will try to channel their experience from the second round when they overcame a 3-2 deficit against the Milwaukee Bucks to move on to the Eastern Conference Finals.
This time, it’s the task that they must complete in order to become NBA champions.
“The message to the guys is to be confident going home,” Celtics head coach Ime Udoka said following his team’s 104-94 loss in San Francisco. “Get your rest and let's get ready to bring it back here.”
The Celtics gave themselves a chance to win Game 5 after overcoming a double-digit halftime deficit and taking a lead during an explosive third quarter in which they scored 35 points. However, they dealt with offensive stagnancy down the stretch for the second straight game, scoring just 20 points in the final frame, which led to their eventual downfall.
“For us, it's really about consistency,” said Udoka. “That's the thing we're not having throughout a full game, is consistent efforts, sustained effort, more so offensively than anything. That's the part where we got to have carryover not only game to game but quarter to quarter, where we saw it happened in the third but not the fourth.”
The Celtics put themselves in a difficult situation by not completing the comeback attempt. Though, this is a team that seems to thrive in difficult situations. This will be the fourth elimination game that they have faced in these Playoffs, and they obviously haven’t failed in one of those situations yet.
“We know what we need to do,” said Rob Williams. “We know what we've been messing up on. We’ve been here before. Got the most confidence in everybody in that locker room … We have to look each other in the eye now, our backs are up against the wall.”
Having had such success while playing with their backs against the wall has allowed the Celtics to keep their faith when facing adversity. In fact, Jaylen Brown claims that his faith is “higher than it's ever been before" coming off Monday’s loss.
“We worked incredibly hard all season to put ourselves in this position,” said Brown. “I still feel like we have so much better basketball to play that we haven't played in the last two games.
“I'm hoping that the next two games we play Celtic basketball and put our best foot forward like I know we can. I know the city is going to be behind us. It's going to be a big Game 6. Looking forward to it.”
Although they must win two games to be crowned champions, Udoka says that Game 6 is the only one they should be focused on right now. That’s the type of focus that got them over the hump against the Bucks, and it’s the type of focus that they’ll need to win out against the Warriors.
“Our message is to take it one at a time,” said the first-year head coach. “We've been here before, did it against Milwaukee. Let's bring it back out to the Bay.”