A wry grin appeared on Jayson Tatum’s face as he sat at the podium inside TD Garden in the early hours of Saturday morning.
His Celtics had just lost a second consecutive game to the underdog but fearless Heat, putting them in a 2-0 series deficit in the Eastern Conference finals. Tatum didn’t seem upset or frustrated by the situation. “I mean, it’s no point in being up here sad and (expletive),” Tatum said. And when he was asked if the Celtics are capable of winning four of their next five games to save their season and advance to the NBA Finals, he expressed confidence.
“Yeah,” he responded with a smile, before standing up and walking off the stage.
History is certainly not on the Celtics’ side as they try to overcome this 2-0 hole.
In 339 tries, only 27 teams in NBA history have overcome a 2-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series. Of those 27 teams, only five of them — the 1969 Lakers, 1994 Rockets, 2005 Mavericks, 2017 Celtics and 2021 Clippers — won a seven-game series after losing the first two games at home.
The 1994 Rockets were the only team of those five to go on and win a championship. And this will be eerily familiar territory for Marcus Smart, Al Horford and Jaylen Brown, each members of the 2017 Celtics that dropped the first two games at home to the No. 8 Bulls before reeling off four consecutive wins.
Remember who was on that Bulls team? Jimmy Butler, of course.
This is a different challenge, though. Six years later, Butler has transformed into a postseason star. He’s leading a group of unheralded players who refuse to quit after knocking off the top-seeded Bucks. The Heat boast one of the best coaches of his generation in Erik Spoelstra.
The Celtics are clearly more talented, but beating this Heat team — which has added motivation after losing to the C’s in last year’s conference finals — will take more. They’ve shown their potential in stretches, building double-digit leads in each of the first two games only to collapse both times. To beat the Heat requires a full 48-minute effort of focus and effort. Now, the Celtics don’t have a margin for error. To lose Sunday night in Miami and fall into a 3-0 deficit would be a fatal blow.
“We’re not dead or anything,” Tatum said. “We got a great opportunity. I still have the utmost confidence, everybody has the utmost confidence.”
“Just got to come out fighting, play basketball,” Brown added. “I think both of these two games they have been able to come out on top, but who is to say we can’t come out on top in the next two games? We just got to come ready to play basketball, can’t lose our confidence. It’s the first to four. It should make for a better story.”
Recurring problems
The Celtics have faltered in crunch time in both games of this series. One common denominator? Tatum hasn’t been a factor in either fourth quarter. He didn’t have a field goal attempt — though had six free throws — and committed three turnovers in the final period of Game 1, then went 0-for-3 with five free throws and a pair of turnovers in Game 2.
His lack of production hasn’t necessarily come down to a lack of involvement, at least in Game 2 when he had the ball for most possessions down the stretch. But the Heat seemed to make an effort to force the ball out of his hands, and the Celtics’ offensive execution faded.
“I had the ball a lot,” Tatum said. “Playing more point and making plays. Obviously, I draw a lot of attention, so creating for others. Sometimes shots just don’t go in. We generated some good shots and I think we got some really good looks.”
Unexpected threat
In last season’s conference finals, Caleb Martin didn’t pose as a danger to the Celtics as they regularly used center Robert Williams as his defender, trailing off of Martin and daring him to shoot. In the rematch, they’re using a similar strategy, but Martin is making the Celtics pay this time.
Martin scored 15 points on 6-for-11 shooting off the bench in Game 1, then had a big performance in Game 2 as he put up 25 points on 11-for-16 shooting. He was the reason why the Heat stayed in the game for most of the night before his teammates took over in the fourth.
Martin said Friday that when the Heat drew the Celtics, his mind went back to last season’s series and how they guarded him. He stopped short of calling it disrespectful that the C’s are defending him similarly this year, but he’s clearly been ready for his moment.
“Everybody has a game plan or a scheme to follow. I get it,” Martin said. “When you’re dealing with guys as good as Jimmy, Bam (Adebayo), guys that draw so much attention, you kind of have to pick your poison. I’m on the short end of the stick when it comes to that.
“But you know, I welcome that. It’s my job to continue to prove to people that I can be the guy to do that off of. I’ve got to not only with that, but that’s just me doing my job and creating space and making things easier on our main guys.”
