MIAMI — The Celtics had a choice of two paths to follow after Sunday’s embarrassing Game 3 loss put them in a hole that no team in NBA history has ever overcome in 150 tries. They could have given in to what seemed inevitable, or fought for their lives.
They chose the latter. And after looking so lost and so disconnected in a Game 3 loss, the Celtics came together on Tuesday night.
In order to do so, they had to make sure they were on the same page. After their convincing 116-99 victory in Game 4 on Tuesday night, Jaylen Brown revealed the Celtics “galvanized” together the night before. But the Celtics star didn’t say exactly what transpired.
“Just all together,” Brown said. “Don’t got to share no details, just we all (got) together at some point during the day yesterday, we was all together as a team, and we wanted to come out and do what we did tonight.”
But 24 hours after a humiliating defeat threatened to suddenly end the Celtics’ championship dreams and send them into a summer full of questions about the franchise’s future, the meeting of galvanization — however it came to be and whatever it entailed — was important.
“Just coming together, talking it out, and like a lot of times when you get to this point down 3-0, you see locker rooms and teams start to go in the other direction,” Brown said. “We want to make sure that we stayed together. We wanted to make sure that we looked each other in the eye and came out today and put our best foot forward, and I’m proud of our group for doing that because you see teams with their back against the wall and you see they just collapse.
“You didn’t see that tonight. You seen us come together, play defense, make the right plays, and I feel like that shows a lot about our character, especially in a game where everything is on the line and everything has went wrong in the last couple of games.”
The Celtics were certainly embarrassed by what happened on Sunday, but in the hours after, they were upbeat for a team that was on the brink of elimination. They questioned their identity and were stunned by how this run had gone south in such a hurry, but they maintained confidence in their ability.
“We still believe we’re the better team,” Malcolm Brogdon said Monday. “We have not played like it in these three games.”
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla saw a group ready for this moment.
“Just the connection and togetherness and awareness and perspective, understanding the situation that we’re in, and you don’t really have a choice,” Mazzulla said. “It’s do or die. Got to stick together.”
On Tuesday, the Celtics didn’t look like a group in panic or worry. Certainly their position was unique and daunting, but as young as they are, they’ve been on this stage for years. Al Horford, after a long 3-point workout during shootaround, interrupted teammate Robert Williams’ media session as he walked off the court.
“We got it tonight! We got it tonight!” Horford yelled out for everyone to hear. Then Brown and Marcus Smart repeated the lines famously said by Kevin Millar before the Red Sox made their historic comeback in 2004: “Don’t let us win tonight.”
The Celtics were loose. They were confident. They seem to operate the best when their backs are against the wall. They did that on Tuesday, and they stayed together through it all, even as it nearly slipped away.
“Everybody was in good spirits, everybody was upbeat, and as cliché as it sounds, we just tried to take it one game at a time,” Tatum said. “We tried to break it down. We didn’t play well the first three games, we didn’t deserve to win, but we didn’t want that to define us, define the season. We’ve still got a long uphill battle to go. But tonight was a good start. Just to try to carry this momentum towards Thursday.”
