For the first time in the Eastern Conference finals, the Celtics played like the Celtics.
Boston avoided elimination Tuesday with the kind of performance the team produced consistently during the regular season, routing Miami 116–99 to send the series back to New England. Trailing 3–0, the desperate Celtics shot a blistering 40% from three in Game 4, carving up Miami’s defense. Jayson Tatum responded to his lackluster Game 3 outing with 33 points to lead the way. Five Celtics hit at least three threes, while the team also stifled Miami defensively.
“They got cleaner looks than they did in the [first three games], but that’s who they’ve been all season long,” Erik Spoelstra said postgame. “They are not going to shoot that poorly that many times in a row. They were getting out in transition, which they’ve been trying to do, and they knocked down some threes, got a two-point lead and from that point mostly had control of the second half.”
In the regular season, Boston was second in the NBA in three-point makes per game, averaging 16 a night on 37.7% shooting. Through the first three games of the conference finals, the Celtics connected on only 10.3 threes a night on a bricky 29.2% shooting. Conversely, Miami—which was fourth-worst in three-point percentage before the playoffs—was shooting 47.8% heading into Game 4. The Heat hit only 8-of-32 from deep Tuesday, an underwhelming 25%.
This was the kind of battleground this series was expected to take place on. The Heat have ridden a hot shooting wave for much of their Cinderella playoff run. Meanwhile, Boston, which has been inconsistent at best over the last three rounds, has rarely put together the kind of two-way effort it did in Game 3.
The Celtics looked every bit like the team that won the second-most games in the league during the regular season. They packed the paint defensively, crowding the Heat’s offense and creating 15 turnovers. They pushed the ball off makes and misses, not allowing Miami’s defense to get set, creating advantageous looks in the process. And after some early turnovers, Tatum finally started taking care of the ball and finding his favorite spots on the floor.
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The Heat credited the Celtics for making their shots, while also lamenting their inability to force more misses. After the game, a Zen Spoelstra made it a point to say Miami’s 3–0 lead was not indicative of the level of competition in the series. He added that while the Heat may have made multiple efforts to chase shooters off the line, it will require “third, fourth and fifth” efforts to keep Boston from catching fire.
It was an extremely impressive response from Boston considering the circumstances. The Celtics fumbled two leads at home to start the series, then looked shellshocked during Sunday’s blowout. At one point Boston was down nine in the third quarter, and lesser teams may have folded, with the offseason—and the Miami nightlife—waiting for them after the game.
“We tried to break it down as we didn’t play well those first three games, we didn’t deserve to win,” Tatum said. “But we didn’t want to let that define us, define our season. We got a long uphill battle to go, but tonight was a good start.”
For their part, the Heat seem to be on an even keel despite the Celtics breathing life back into this series. Asked after the game how he avoids getting too low after a playoff loss, Jimmy Butler said it’s important to him to take his mind off basketball for a time in between games.
“We’re gonna listen to some music, we’re gonna drink some beers back there, we’re gonna go have some wine,” Butler said after the game about how he’ll handle the loss. “At the end of the day, you fall back on your habits. … We’re gonna smile, we’re gonna be in this together like we always are, we’re going to go get one on the road.”
As cliché or trite as it sounds, the three-point line really did tell the story in Game 4. The Celtics tightened the screws defensively and shot the ball much closer to what they are capable of compared to the first three games of the series.
The question for Boston is whether it can string together three more showings such as Tuesday’s, because the margin of error is zero and the team hasn’t exactly been firing on all cylinders in the playoffs. Still, for the first time in this series the pressure has shifted to the Heat. And if the Celtics have regained the form that earned them 57 wins and the No. 2 seed in the first place, then the conference finals just got a lot more interesting.
