News For Boston Celtics there Still an Opportunity in NBA Playoffs

MIAMI: It might be a news for Boston Celtics. They had three stops on one possession in the early few minutes of the third quarter, and each time the Miami Heat received the ball once more. The fourth effort resulted in a 3-pointer by Max Strus, giving his team a 9-point lead. When Boston was down 3-0 in the Eastern Conference finals, it was the perfect time to give up.

The Boston Celtics might have easily given up.

Instead, a pair of Jayson Tatum three-pointers—the first six of his 14 points in the third—sparked an 18-0 run that gave the Celtics a victory and extended their season for Thursday’s game in Boston.

“Either way may have happened”. Tatum, who had a game-high 33 points, said, “We could have kept us apart or pulled us together, but we settled in and just began making plays”. “Obviously, goals were being scored and other things of that nature, but we were simply playing the proper way by making stops and moving the ball. We performed well.

The biggest threat to the makeup of a team that moves ahead towards to the NBA Finals in 2022 and came into this season as title contenders came 48 hours after a third consecutive defeat to start the series against the eight seed.

Calls to stop the connection between Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum, which has all but ensured them a berth in the league’s final four each year they are healthy, came from all quarters.

The Celtics team, according to separate reports, “feels like a group that’s tired of pretending to like each other,” and “This locker room never got over Ime Udoka’s firing as head coach.” These players did not agree with the organization’s justification.

In a Monday night team meeting in Miami, the Celtics dared one another not to let Jimmy Butler and the Heat humiliate them once more while the outside clamor grew into an unbearable volume.

“Obviously, we underperformed in the last three games, and you start to hear all these stories come out about X, Y, and Z, who knows where it actually comes from — 99 percent of them is not true at all,” Brown said following Tuesday’s victory.

Jaylen Brown.

“We emphasized staying together and making sure we were on the same page last night before our game today. We were reluctant to go outside and lay an egg. We wanted to come out and play as a team, have faith in one another, play some defense, be proud of ourselves, and figure out how to win a game. We can all do it more than adequately. So, we completed it tonight”.

Jayson Tatum.

Tatum continued, “As corny as it sounds, we just tried to take it one game at a time. Everyone was in high spirits and happy. “We made an effort to dissect it. The first three games we didn’t play very well. Although we didn’t deserve to win, we didn’t want the season or ourselves to be defined by it. Although we still have a long uphill battle ahead of us, tonight was a solid beginning. Just gotta keep this momentum going till Thursday”.

Jayson Tatum.

The Celtics echoed the sentiments expressed by former Boston Red Sox player Kevin Millar prior to his team’s rally from a 3-0 deficit in the 2004 American League Championship Series as they came for their Game 4 shootaround.

Marcus Smart cried out, “Don’t let us get one.”

Brown continued, “Don’t let us win tonight.

Nobody was surprised when, during Boston’s 18-0 run in the third quarter on the Tuesday night, the television cameras discovered former New York Yankees Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, victims of that 2004 rally.

After scoring 11 points and dishing out 6 assists, Smart commented, “Now we just have to go win another one.” All that matters is that. Each game is treated separately. We are aware that the deck is stacked against us, but as a team, we have to press on because we all have faith in each other.

The upcoming game is all that concerns. The Celtics still have a mountain to climb, but a weight has been lifted off their shoulders and belief has taken its place. Malcolm Brogdon stated as much between Games 3 and 4 that Boston still believes it is the superior team, and they will have another opportunity to show it in Game 5 at home, where they are only 10-11 in the last two postseasons.

When a Game 6 is forced back in Miami, the Heat are suddenly on the hook for it.

We want to return to Miami, Brown remarked. “I think we’ll feel good about ourselves if that happens,” she said.

In 150 postseason series attempts, no NBA team has ever come back from a 3-0 disadvantage to win, but 13 times a team has done it after falling behind 3-1, and the Boston Celtics recently overcame a 3-2 hole in their second-round series against the Philadelphia 76ers.

If a club could ever pull off the feat, you might think about playing them against a team that had a negative point differential at the end of the regular season. This squad led the NBA in net rating.

Beyond Tuesday’s result, there are other reasons to have faith in Boston. The Celtics lost games 1 and 2 after blowing 12-point fourth-quarter leads, but when they had no other option but to win, they found their tenacity, wiping out Miami leads in each of the first three quarters and fending off every threat to their advantage in the fourth.

Miami had the fourth-worst shooting team during the regular season (34.4 3P%), but they were shooting 47.8% as a team coming into Game 4.

Through three games, Caleb Martin, Gabe Vincent, and Duncan Robinson in particular averaged nine 3-pointers on 51.9% shooting from beyond the arc. With a 3-of-13 performance in the 17-point loss, they came back to earth and performed more in line with their season average (33.9%).

(Stars came to see Stars. The above Tweet.)

That was in large part due to Boston’s defense. The Celtics managed to come together for one night, which translated to the dynamic offense they are used to playing, despite how unlikely it first seemed that they could fix their connection on that end in just two days, especially given that it has been broken throughout these playoffs.

They had a team 3-point percentage of 29.2% going into Game 4, but they made 18 of their 45 tries (40%) on Tuesday, which brought them closer to their regular-season average (37.7%). Of the 18 triples, 16 were helped.

Erik Spoelstra, the coach of the Miami Heat, remarked, “They are not going to shoot that poorly that many times in a row, particularly if they are getting some open ones.” “I’ll have to see what type of efforts and/or breakdowns we had with that, since they got a lot of clean ones tonight. And yes, (he says) I do believe it will be rather simple to maintain our 3-point shooting. Simply put, our attacking actions lacked a lot of power.

Erik Spoelstra.

“Anytime you’re in a do-or-die situation, it forces you to build an awareness and perspective,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said, “feeling that his players’ jobs were on the line in Game 4”.

Joe Mazzulla said.

It has always existed, and I believe we only recently gained understanding of it. We only had to remind each other that it’s fragile during these moments, and I thought the boys got along very well.

It depends on the Celtics’ ability to remain cohesive. Just prevent them from winning Game 5.

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