Eastern Conference Finals

Taylor Snow

The Boston Celtics have their backs against the wall of the NBA bubble, but they’re not ready to burst out just yet.

After dropping Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals Wednesday night and falling into a 3-1 series deficit against the Miami Heat, the C’s know that they cannot afford to take another step back, so they’re just looking to move forward inch-by-inch in order to keep their season from popping.

“We just gotta win one game at a time,” Jayson Tatum said following his team’s 112-109 Game 4 loss. “Don’t gotta win a series next game. We just gotta give it all we got. It’s win or go home from here on out, so that’s the approach we’ve got to take.”

The Celtics will need to come out with the same type of urgency that they displayed during Saturday night’s 117-106 Game 3 win, which they led from start to finish. Unfortunately, they were unable to carry over such urgency into Wednesday, as Miami got out to a hot start and led for the majority of Game 4.

“I just don’t think we attacked enough,” said Kemba Walker, who tallied 20 points, five assists and four rebounds. “I don’t think we were aggressive enough. We weren’t as aggressive as last game, so we have to get back to that.”

Jaylen Brown said that the team not only has to be aggressive on the offensive end, but on the defensive side of the ball, as well. He noted how once Miami’s shooters got comfortable early on, it was difficult to break their confidence, particularly that of 20-year-old rookie Tyler Herro who scored a career-high 37 points.

“The good thing is we have another chance and an opportunity to keep playing,” said Brown. “I believe I’m a fighter to the end. That’s how a lot of our guys' minds are wired, so we just have to come out and take it one game at a time.”

Walker’s mind is certainly wired in such a way, especially now that he has finally gotten to taste postseason success for the first time in his eight-year NBA career.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got to find a way,” said the All-Star point guard. “We can do it. It’s about pride, it’s about wanting to do it, and next game we’ve got to come out and show that.”

However, only a handful of teams – 13 out of 257 to be exact – have ever shown such resolve when facing a 3-1 series deficit. Those historical odds don’t mean much to C’s coach Brad Stevens, though, as he and his team are only focused on the current moment.

“It doesn't really matter,” Stevens said. “The situation we are in, we’ve got to play well Friday. We don't have to win three games on Friday. We have to win one. That's going to be our focus, that's going to be our attention, and we'll get after it.”

Brown won’t let the historical data get to his head, either, and he shouldn’t. After all, the Celtics have beaten Miami three times during the 2019-20 Season, so there’s no reason to believe that they can’t beat them three times more.

“We still have opportunities, we still have a chance,” Brown iterated. “I believe in the team. We’re down 3-1, but I believe that we can still come back and win. We all have to believe it. We all have to come out and play like it starting today, starting now, starting next game.”

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Down 3-1 in the ECF, Celtics Still Believe They Can Fight Back

“Before you see the rainbow, it has to storm.”

Those were the wise words of Celtics guard and team meteorologist Marcus Smart Monday afternoon, as he looked back on Boston’s rocky start to the Eastern Conference Finals last week and how his team has since responded.

The Celtics opened up the series with two straight losses to the Miami Heat, both of which Miami achieved via double-digit comeback efforts during the second half. The frustrating nature of the defeats caused a thunderstorm of emotion to brew inside the locker room after Game 2. However, the lightning that struck among the players that night was exactly the type of spark that was needed in order to bring the Celtics closer together so that they could refocus and respond with a Game 3 win Saturday night.

Smart fittingly described the postgame locker room scene following Game 2 as “electrifying.”

“Of course emotions are going to fly, but we’re a family and it happens,” the veteran guard added.

Sometimes it’s necessary for emotions to fly among teammates, and this was one such occasion.

“I would have been more worried after that Game 2 loss if everyone was calm, cool, and collected. That would have been a problem,” said Smart. “I hate losing more than I love winning. I play with a lot of people who feel the same way, so for us to be able to express that, to get it out, and to build that type of energy for ourselves, because there aren’t as many fans here. We have our families here, but for the most part they just sit over there, cheer, and it’s a different feel. You have to bring a different type of energy for yourself and your teammates. So for us to be able to find that fuel to get us back on the right track was something important.”

Boston got back on the right track by coming out Saturday night in attack mode. The C’s led from start to finish in Game 3, as they out-scored Miami 60-36 inside the paint en route to a 117-106 win.

More importantly, the win displayed how together this Celtics team is despite the media’s concerns about the post-game exchanges that took place inside their locker room after Game 2.

“It shows that we are as close as ever,” Smart said of the way in which he and his teammates responded. “Even though we go through adversity, we still are a family and we are going to need to have moments like that where we go through adversity, we say what we have to say, we all come together and get our emotions out, and we go take it out on the other team.”

Not only did going through such adversity create a spark for the Celtics, but Smart believes it was also a maturing moment for himself and his teammates.

“I knew what type of guys we were, I knew the type of team we had,” Smart said. “I knew we were emotional, I knew we were passionate and I knew we loved each other. I learned, not just myself, but a lot of my teammates grew up even more through that adversity. I've always said, 'Before you see the rainbow, it has to storm.' For us, that was a storm that we had to go through.”

Now that the Celtics have made it through the storm, they can keep chasing the rainbow.

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Smart Says C’s are ‘As Close as Ever’ After Emotional Game 3 Response

If the last two weeks of heart-palpitating action between the Boston Celtics and Toronto Raptors were to your liking, then buckle up, because it appears as though Boston’s Eastern Conference Finals matchup against Miami could be of the same ilk.

Game 1 against the Heat Tuesday night was loaded with intense back-and-forth competition, clutch shots, big-time stops, and even some free basketball in the form of overtime. Unfortunately for the Celtics, they were on the wrong end of the biggest stop of the night, as Bam Adebayo stuffed Jayson Tatum at the rim near the end of OT to seal a 117-114 win. On the fortunate side for the C’s, they’ve got plenty of series left and they’re excited to see how they can respond.

“It was a great game, two great teams who play really hard,” Marcus Smart said after putting up 26 points in the loss. “They got the plays that they needed that mattered. They did their job and it’s up to us to come back in Game 2 and do ours.”

Boston got a good feel for what it needs to do differently in order to get the job done in Game 2, and it starts with its late-game defense. For the majority of Game 1, Boston excelled on that end of the floor, as it held Miami to just 34 points during the first and third quarters combined, and entered the final frame with a 12-point lead. However, the C’s committed some costly fouls early in the fourth, which allowed Miami to enter the bonus and pick up some momentum.

As Smart put it after the game, the Celtics need to do a better job of “guarding their yard’ moving forward.

“We gotta put our hands up and make them go through us,” Smart said. “We bailed them out, especially late on a couple of those shots they were taking to get to them to the line and silly fouls. You gotta guard your yard. They put a lot of guys in isolation and picked on a lot of guys and you gotta guard your yard, plain and simple.”

The other defensive element that the Celtics will likely emphasize during Wednesday's film session is getting back in transition after Miami’s offense accumulated an abundance of fast-break points down the stretch.

“That’s what they do,” Kemba Walker said of Miami’s fast-paced offense, which tallied 16 fast-break points. “They’re a really great team in transition so we have to do better on that.”

And they know they can do better. After all, the Celtics did just eliminate the No. 1 transition offense in the NBA last week when they took down the Raptors.

“We believe if we clean a couple things up, we'll fix those things and it’ll be a different outcome,” said Smart. “You’ve got to tip your hat to [the Heat]. They executed very well down the stretch and we didn’t, especially on the defensive end. We had miscommunication on a lot of guys’ part. And in transition we allowed them to do what they do best, and that’s get out and run.”

Aside from their late-game defensive struggles, the Celtics have plenty of positives to take away from Game 1. There was the dominance of Jayson Tatum, who stuffed the stat sheet with 30 points, 14 rebounds, five assists, three steals, and two blocks. There was the sharpshooting prowess of Marcus Smart, who canned six 3-pointers during a 26-point effort. There was the stellar play of Brad Wanamaker off the bench, as he notched 11 points, six assists and a game-high five steals. And there was also solid overall success against Miami’s zone defense, as the C’s displayed great ball movement early on.

All of that put together made for one heck of a series opener; unfortunately for the Celtics, they just couldn’t take it home. But now, it’s their turn to respond.

“That’s what the playoffs is: making adjustments,” said Tatum. “Seeing what you did well, seeing what you could do better, move on.”

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C’s Look to Make Defensive Tweaks Following Game 1 OT Loss

Youthful teams often don’t last long in the NBA Playoffs. The Boston Celtics, however, have proven to be an exception to that rule this summer, having made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals despite having the youngest roster of all 16 playoff teams.

What has helped Boston prevail in this situation is the fact that its collective youth does not in any way coincide with its overall experience as a group. Even though the average age of its 17 players comes out to just 25.09 years, many of those guys have already been through the postseason grind multiple times, making their youth insignificant.

Take, for example, starters Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. At age 23, Brown is about to play in his third conference finals and his 11th playoff series overall. At 22, Tatum is about to embark on his second conference finals and his eighth postseason series overall.

Many players in their thirties don't even have that much playoff experience on their resumes.

“There aren't very many guys at 22 and 23 who have done what Jayson and Jaylen have done, especially in meaningful moments in playoff games ever since they arrived here,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said Monday afternoon, one day before opening up the Eastern Conference Finals against the Miami Heat. “So we're really lucky that those guys are here. They do have a ton of experience in this moment, more so than a lot of other guys that are a lot older that are really good.”

Not only have they played in meaningful games, but they have also held significant roles throughout their postseason careers. Brown has been a starter in 35 out of his 55 playoff games, while Tatum has started all 39 of his postseason appearances. That means that by Game 2 of this coming series, Tatum will have already started half of a regular season’s worth of games in the postseason alone, while still being younger than many college players.

Gaining such extensive experience has allowed Tatum to learn exactly what it takes to win at this stage of the season – a knowledge base that continues to develop with each game he plays.

“Just building winning habits,” Tatum said of his experience. “I’ve gone to the Playoffs every year. It's my second time in the Eastern Conference Finals, so just grateful for the opportunity. It doesn't happen often. Just a testament to some great players I've played with, guys that are all about just winning.”

Ironically, it’s the Celtics’ older players who generally have the least amount of postseason experience. Twenty-nine-year-old Kemba Walker, for example, entered this season with just 11 playoff games under his belt. On Friday night, he clinched his first-ever berth into the conference finals, after never even making out of the first round throughout his first eight seasons in Charlotte.

“I've never made it this far, so I thought it was definitely meaningful for me to kind of enjoy it that night,” Walker said.

The All-Star point guard is also enjoying the opportunity to feed off of his younger teammates who have been through this grind before.

“They just love the game of basketball,” Walker said of Brown and Tatum. “They love to play, they love to compete, they love to win, and I love to be a part of it.”

The next part of Boston’s journey will be played against a Heat team which has the sixth-oldest roster in the league. For the Celtics, however, age is just a number. The more important factor at this stage is experience, and that is something they already have plenty of.

Eastern Conference Finals

Down 3-1 in the ECF, Celtics Still Believe They Can Fight Back

Smart Says C’s are ‘As Close as Ever’ After Emotional Game 3 Response

C’s Look to Make Defensive Tweaks Following Game 1 OT Loss

Despite Youth, Celtics Boast Plenty of Experience at this Stage