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The Celtics will be facing a team that’s missing four members of its rotation.
The Boston Celtics will face the Miami Heat in Game 3 of their opening playoff series later tonight. Joe Mazzulla’s team must bounce back after a humbling defeat at the hands of Erik Spoelsta’s team. To make matters worse, the Heat were missing Jimmy Butler, Terry Rozier and Josh Richardson.
All three of Miami’s injured players will be out of the rotation on Saturday, too. However, the Heat could potentially lose a fourth member of their rotation. Delon Wright is listed as questionable for personal reasons.
Wright has 22.8 minutes of playing time over the first two postseason games against the Celtics. He’s averaging 11 points, 2 assists and 2.5 rebounds on 63.6% from the field and 75% shooting from 3-point range. Without Wright, the Heat’s on-ball creation takes a further hit, putting even more pressure on the shoulders of Tyler Herro.
Boston will be heading into the Kasyea Center with the aim of taking control of the series. Miami stole a win at the TD Garden on Wednesday. If the Celtics lose, they will be trailing a team that is operating without their best player. There can be no excuses, especially when the opponent is consistently losing additional members of the rotation.
Joe Mazzulla’s team must adjust their defensive approach and limit Miami’s ability to generate open threes, especially off DHO actions and screening actions. Their pick-up points need to be higher. Their switches need to be crisper. Fortunately for the Celtics, Herro can’t play every minute. Therefore, Wright’s potential absence will hurt how consistently the Heat can generate reliable offense off the dribble.
Mazzulla’s team has two games in Miami before the series heads back to Boston, where the Celtics will undoubtedly be looking to close it out and turn their attention to the second round. In order to do that, they need to focus on beating the team in front of them, and not take their foot off the gas because certain players are missing from the rotation.
Boston has the perfect opportunity to dispatch the Heat and leave them in the rearview. Wright’s absence makes that chance a little easier for game three. Now, the team needs to go out and execute, and remind the world of their championship credentials.
It is April 24, 2024. The Boston Celtics have suffered an upset loss in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. It is April 21, 2023, the Boston Celtics—
If you’ve watched the Boston Celtics any time in recent memory, you likely walked away from their Game 2 loss to the Miami Heat with a feeling of deja vu. Indeed, on multiple levels, the surprise loss at TD Garden feels very akin to what we’ve grown familiar with from the Celtics’ recent performance in the postseason. Though they’ve consistently managed to position themselves as a high seed in the Eastern Conference, it’s rare that they’ve been able to breeze through the first round the way you might expect them to.
The fact that this series feels more uncertain than logic suggests it should, then, is honestly something of a tradition. Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and revisit some of the challenges the team has faced in the past couple of decades, and see if there are any lessons we can take from them.
Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Our journey starts just last season, in a first round series against the Atlanta Hawks. Facing a Hawks team renowned for its mediocrity — quite literally hanging at or around .500 for the bulk of its season — the Celtics dropped two games on the way to a six-game series win. Pulling the strings was Atlanta star Trae Young, who feels like he was designed in a lab to make his way into an article like this, as a microwave scoring guard and playoff provocateur. In retrospect, this never really felt like a series the Celtics were ever in real danger of losing, but Young and the Hawks have a way of working themselves into your head nonetheless.
Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images
The 2017-18 season brought us another doozy, as the second-seeded Celtics went seven games against the seven-seed Milwaukee Bucks, but this one is a little easier to forgive. The Bucks weren’t quite what they are now; Giannis Antetokounmpo had yet to win his first MVP award and co-star Khris Middleton had yet to make his first All-Star Game, while Boston lacked the services of their would-be top options in Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. The Celtics that remained were more akin in talent to the Bucks than their records suggested, and the result was a spirited and engaging back-and-forth series that either team had the potential to win. Boston had home-court advantage, however, and that proved to be the deciding factor as neither team claimed a win on the road.
Even their first round sweeps haven’t come easily. Both the 2018-19 win over Indiana and the 2021-22 win over Brooklyn came harder than the final record would suggest. Both series saw single-digit margins of victory in each win, with the Pacers’ defense causing issues for the Irving-led Boston offense (84-74 final score in Game 1) and the Nets’ star power providing a formidable hurdle for Boston to overcome. The Celtics swept Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and the Nets, yes, but they had to work hard for it — including a thrilling Game 1 that ended on a buzzer-beating Tatum layup. The Nets earn an additional mention here for their 2020-21 gentleman’s sweep over Boston, though that series comes with the obvious caveat of Jaylen Brown’s season-ending wrist injury.
Lest we make this sound like an issue exclusive to the Tatum and Brown era of Celtics basketball, though, the history of first round difficulties run deeper in the franchise’s DNA. They’ve been doing this before Tatum even donned a green jersey. Lest we forget the infamous “Rajon Rondo series” against the Chicago Bulls, in which the top-seeded Celtics dropped consecutive games at home against their erstwhile franchise point guard.
The takes we heard after this series! An entire season of brilliant play from Isaiah Thomas and the Celtics distilled down to two games of underperformance. Those Celtics would eventually fall short, of course — they suffered the twin wounds of Thomas’ injured hip and the lack of LeBron James on their roster — but the Bulls hadn’t exposed some fatal flaw in their game. One inspired adjustment from then-coach Brad Stevens to insert sparkplug wing Gerald Green into the starting lineup, and the Celtics won four straight games to advance.
Traveling further back, most of us will remember how grueling the Celtics’ run was through the Eastern Conference en route to the 2008 title. The eventual champions set the NBA record for games played in a single postseason, going to seven games in the first two rounds and six games in the Eastern Conference and NBA Finals.
Photo by Steve Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images
From that run, the second round gets most of the attention for Paul Pierce and the Celtics’ battle against then-23-year-old LeBron James and the Cavaliers. But the Atlanta Hawks put the Big Three to the test in the first round too, as a perhaps sneakily talented 8-seed featuring a rookie Al Horford in the first of his many playoffs appearances. The Hawks won every game they played on their home court in that series, including a hard-fought Game 6 win that saw them dispatch the Celtics in crunch time. Boston won Game 7 in dominant fashion, 99-65, but the Hawks made a statement in that series, planting the seeds of what would coalesce into a 60-win top seed team a few years down the road.
What does all of this mean for the 2023-24 Boston Celtics? In terms of the tangible, not much. They were the best team in the NBA this season, and they’re facing an eight-seed absent its best player. Winning the next three games and moving on to battle the winner of Cavs-Magic is the expectation — anything else would serve as a disappointment. History can be instructive, but as a predictive tool, it’s unreliable. This is not the same Celtics team as any of the others mentioned here; their fate will be of their own making.
Intangibly, though, this feels like an opportunity to exorcise some demons. All of these first round series, in one way or another, have fed into a prevailing train of thought that this franchise underwhelms relative to its potential in the postseason — to say nothing of their struggles with the Heat in the later rounds of recent playoff runs. This is the year for the Boston Celtics to flip the script — to show that they’re truly built different. Take care of the Miami Heat in the rest of this series, and Game 2’s loss morphs from a continuation of a concerning trend to a footnote in the history of this franchise.
A Celtics-Heat rematch felt inevitable, and we all naively convinced ourselves it would be different this time around.
Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday will change everything. Caleb Martin won’t shoot 97-percent from 3. Erik Spoelstra won’t have any more tricks up his sleeve. Oh, wow. Jimmy Butler’s out? Celtics in 4. Maybe 5, if Miami gets lucky.
We all did it. Every last one of us. We fell for the trap – again. This is exactly the way the Heat want it (well, they’d probably prefer having Butler, but you get the idea). They love being the underdogs. They love messing up a game plan. They love terrorizing the opponent – and the Celtics, in particular.
Wednesday’s 111-101 Heat win was just one game, but it carried more weight than a typical setback. It reminded everyone that this Miami team should, under absolutely no circumstances, be taken lightly. Spoelstra is the best coach in the NBA and has them prepared every night. The Heat are relentless, and they know how to beat the Celtics.
“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Jayson Tatum told reporters. “It’s the playoffs and especially with that team, it’s never going to go how people expect it to go and that’s the beauty of the playoffs.”
OK, that’s nice and all, but they have to actually keep that in mind on the court. The Celtics should slap bright yellow caution tape on each Heat player’s forehead that reads: “WE ARE GOOD.” Instead of giving fans Celtics towels, they should hand out “HEAT CULTURE IS REAL” signs.
I still believe the Celtics will win this series, but this was a humbling reminder that nothing is guaranteed in the playoffs. It’s critical for the Celtics to not underestimate the Heat moving forward. If they do, we all may be left wondering what could have been – again.
I believe the Celtics are telling themselves to not underestimate the Heat, but telling yourself to do something and actually doing it are two entirely different things. For instance, you can map out a diet perfectly, and tell yourself to follow it, but if you sneak downstairs and devour that irresistible Yodel at 3 a.m., that negates all your hard work the rest of the day.
It’s about discipline, detail and execution. Doing 90 percent of the work is easy; it’s the final 10 percent that gets you where you want to go.
NBC Sports’ Brian Scalabrine made an astute observation during Wednesday’s broadcast. He pointed out that the Celtics think they have a mismatch at every spot, so they’re repeatedly force-feeding the ball to their stars. It looks juicy (I could go for a Yodel right now), but it’s a trap. That’s exactly what Miami wants you to do.
Miami now has four playoff games in the past two seasons with 50% shooting from three...against Boston.
The Heat pride themselves on their physicality, smarts and cohesiveness. If you try to beat them 1-on-1, you’re likely going to fail. It wasn’t that the Celtics were playing selfishly; it was that they weren’t playing strategically.
In Game 3, it’s imperative that they return to their roots and play the way they did for most of Game 1 and the bulk of the season. Boston needs to play downhill, space the floor and make the extra pass. Forget bully ball. Trust what’s gotten you here and what works.
The Celtics need to pretend they’re up against a lineup of Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Hakeem Olajuwon. They need to squint a little harder and pretend it’s Nikola Jokic, not Nikola Jovic. Don’t let Tyler Herro’s harmless facial hair fool you; he can hoop. The Heat are good! They’re very good! This is an elite basketball team!
"This is more about the Miami Heat showing you what they're about.... They want to make this a series."
We’ve all been in a scenario where we’ve entered a sporting event assuming we should win because we’re the better player or team. It doesn’t always work out the way we see it unfolding in our head. On the flip side, we’ve all been the underdog and been underestimated. There’s nothing more satisfying than stunning an opponent that assumes it’ll cruise to a win.
The Celtics are more talented, but they have to play like they’re less talented. They have to adopt the mindset of an underdog and play a scrappy style of basketball. Contest 3-pointers. Dive on the floor. Fire up the crowd. Do it for Marcus Smart. Do it for Mike Gorman.
“Come back. Be the harder-playing team next game,” Jaylen Brown told reporters. “And execute. Let everything else take care of itself. Gotta win the fight.”
Great. Now actually do it! Win the fight.
If they come out with a different fire and intensity in Game 3 – and I genuinely (perhaps foolishly) believe they will – they should be fine. If they don’t, it could mark the beginning of the end.
I believe this team has the poise and tenacity to learn from its mistakes and rise to the occasion. I believe this will be a turning point for the better. I believe they’ll figure it out.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics. | Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
What happened to the game I love?
I was hoping I wouldn’t have to write this blog so soon into the playoffs, but here we are. It took the Celtics just two tries to drop a game at TD Garden, after losing there just four times throughout the regular season.
Their performance in the 111-101 loss in Game 2 was nothing short of disgusting (I’m writing this immediately after, so I’m still fired up).
Boston’s jersey selection for Wednesday’s home game?
Also disgusting.
Instead of electing to wear the traditional home whites, the Cs chose to roll with the road greens, despite the game being played on the parquet.
Now, this may not seem consequential, but trust me, there is a level of seriousness that comes along with dressing appropriately for the moment.
Sadly, at 9 a.m. Wednesday, I knew that the Celtics were going to show us some sub-serious behavior, and that’s exactly what we saw.
So far this postseason (as of 10:19 p.m. on Wednesday), home teams who have worn white are 7-0.
The only two teams who have lost games at home, the Cs and the Milwaukee Bucks, have elected to stray away from the traditional white jerseys.
It’s best not to test the basketball Gods during such a high-stakes time of year. It’s best to play the game the way it’s meant to be played.
Do we really think it’s a coincidence that 2023 Caleb Martin not only returned in Game 2, but shared his powers with his Miami teammates? Probably not.
The Heat maintained honor by wearing their traditional road black uniforms and were rewarded.
The Celtics are a franchise built on tradition, a winning tradition, a tradition where they wore white at home and green on the road.
Say what you want about Giannis Antetokounmpo, but he does, in fact, know ball. He shared some championship wisdom with us all, earlier this season when he ranted about everyone within the Milwaukee Bucks organization needing to be better. He even name-dropped the team’s equipment manager, explaining that even they need to be performing at the top level.
“Every single thing, everybody has to be better,” Antetokounmpo said back in January (h/t Eric Nehm). “Everybody. It starts from the equipment manager.”
Ironically enough, he spoke with Michael McCullough, who is the chief marketing officer for Miami.
McCullough gave some great insight into why the way teams dress for games has changed in the last several seasons, citing jersey sales as a key reason.
He explained that wearing different uniforms at home allows fans to see some different threads and can lead to more merchandise sales.
“That’s part of the whole lore of sports, that tradition,” McCullough told Vorkunov. “There’s room, I think, in sports to create new traditions. I like to think that’s what we’re doing, creating other opportunities for people to have another relationship with their team around what the players are wearing. And of course, it’s broadened out for us entire merchandise lines to support these uniforms and to support this second identity. It just becomes kind of who you are.”
The trend started to change in the 2017-18 season when Nike took over as the league’s uniform sponsor.
“Nike brought on a four-uniform system: the Association, a white jersey; the Icon, a dark jersey; the Statement, an alternate jersey; and the City Edition, which changes annually and has no set color scheme,” Vorkunov wrote.
While Nike may love to print money, I’d prefer that they stray their greed away from the NBA playoffs and keep their grubby hands off of this sacred time of year.
(If you like the way jerseys are now, then you’re untitled to your wrong opinion.)
Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
It only took two games for my cocky, overconfident takes about the Heat to meet their maker. But not to worry: I’ve prepared a countermeasure
This can’t happen again.
The Celtics can not lose to the Heat on a string of mathematically outlandish shooting performances again. They can not stand around like deer in a boxing ring made out of headlights again as their opponents rain threes on their bewildered heads. They can not look confused or defeated when Miami brings their A-game when the Celtics were bracing for a chill C+.
And it’s not going to happen again, but we all got a glimpse of what it could look like if it did on Wednesday night. Armed with their recently-outlawed bioweapon known as M.I.S.S. (Miami Induced Shell Shock), the Heat proceeded to make every three in human history as the Celtics MISSed (see what I did there) every opportunity to take control of the game.
It’s not like the Celtics got blown out, and they had lots of chances to snag that game from the inevitably encroaching jaws of defeat. Jaylen Brown scored 11-straight points to close out the half, but the Celtics failed to follow it up with a strong start to the third. Derrick White brought a lightning-strike six points to cut the lead to five in the fourth quarter, but the Heat had the answer.
Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Each time Boston tried to finally turn the tide, Miami hit a three. It was a brutal spectator experience, made even worse by the fact that I’m actually in Germany right now and stayed up until 3:45 AM to watch the game. I’ve endured the Heat’s barrages of black magic before, but doing it with the throes of physical exhaustion is a whole new animal.
In no way did the Celtics deserve to win or had the game stolen, as they certainly didn’t and it certainly wasn’t. Boston was outworked, outplayed, and most of all outshot to a degree that a win would have felt disingenuous. I still would have accepted a disingenuous win, but Miami earned it.
But there’s a certain cruelty to how they earned it, hearkening back to every insufferable tendency that sank the Celtics last year and doing so in a way that defies logical understanding. Boston could have weathered a storm of threes, but Miami left the rain clouds at home and brought an avalanche to TD Garden.
Avalanches are the deadly cousins of rainstorms. Someone at the wrong place at the wrong time could get into trouble in the rain, but avalanches have an uncontrollable license to kill whenever they decide to appear. And while rain clouds give some warning to potential victims, an avalanche can happen in the blink of an eye.
The Heat didn’t just make a bunch of threes Wednesday night to beat the Celtics; they threw the entire force of their organization behind making a bunch of threes. Never before have I seen a team so maniacally committed to finding and launching threes, nor did it seem like the Celtics ever had either. Per NBA tracking, most of these shots were wide open (closest defender 6+ feet away) or only lightly contested. Shooting nearly 53.5 percent from deep is a preposterous clip, but none of them were crazy shots.
If anything, the Heat played Celtics basketball. Everyone on the roster was clearly under instructions to fire at will, and everyone from Jaime Jacquez Jr. to Haywood Highsmith was locked and loaded to produce as many points as possible from beyond the arc. These guys are below average shooters, but found an endless well of confidence in the face of a confused Celtics team.
Photo by Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
The Celtics rightly didn’t offer too much resistance, since letting a shaky shooter launch triples isn’t always the worst strategy defensively. But that mindset only holds water with guys that would rather drive than shoot, such as Giannis Antetokounmpo or Ja Morant. They are so unstoppable downhill that leaving them open to shoot threes is usually the only option, and they’re the ones giving up the advantage if they take the jump shot instead of driving.
But the Heat do not have Giannis Antetokounmpo or Ja Morant. They have Nikola Jovic and Delon Wright, guys who were in and out of NBA rotations all year and aren’t polished scorers at any level. For them, if Head Coach Erik Spoelstra said “take a three whenever you have the chance,” they aren’t giving up any real advantages by doing so.
The Heat hit a ton of threes and won the game, that’s the truth of the matter. But we’re not going to sit here and play the victim since I’m fresh out of victim juice after last year, so instead I’ll end with a personal apology mixed with a lesson.
I underestimated these guys… again. I wrote not one, not two, but three articles explaining how the Heat are not to be feared nor are they even really our rivals. For all of that, I would like to issue a formal apology.
I naively hoped that this would be easy, that this Celtics team was different and would be able to dispatch of this buffoonery without the same strife and anguish of seasons past. I naively believed that the universe-bending lightning of last season couldn’t strike twice. But of course it wasn’t going to be easy, since this hydra of a team won’t die no matter how many heads you cut off.
So in an official CelticsBlog press release, I declare the Miami Heat an official rival of the Boston Celtics. Filled with hatred for the life decisions that resulted in my total dejection and despair at the rich hour of four in the morning, I had no choice but to take this step. I’m not happy about throwing my highly-sophisticated historical explanation out the window, but I’m so sick of these guys that I had to.
The good news? Now that the Heat are an official, Oliver Fox Approved™ Rival, the Celtics can unleash their full fury to sink this ship once and for all without worrying about historical justification. They should be closing out on threes like these guys are their mortal enemies, because—as of now—they are.
The Celtics need to trust Jayson Tatum as their primary ballhandler.
The NBA script writers need new ideas. Miami shoots over 50% and steals a game in Boston? Derivative, predictable junk! Nonetheless, that is the story of Wednesday night, but there was an undercurrent of a B plot below the surface. Even with Miami shooting 94% (rough estimate) on open 3s, they only scored 111 points. The Celticsaveragedover 120 per game this season. Game 2 was there for the taking, and they didn’t do it.
Miami helped hard off shooters in Game 1, throwing crowds at Jayson Tatum every time he loaded up to attack, daring the Celtics to hit threes. They did, a lot.
Miami adjusted in Game 2, and the Celtics were slow to adapt. Help didn’t come and Miami switched everything and forced the Celtics to beat them in isolation or off the dribble.
Spo’s gambit worked. The Cs’ offensive rating (per Cleaning the Glass) dropped from 129.5 in Game 1 (elite) to 108.6 in Game 2 (below average). I think this partially gets fixed by being more decisive and simply playing better (looking at you, KP), but there is another adjustment staring the Celtics in the face: give Jayson Tatum the damn ball.
But Mr. Spooner, Tatum leads the team in touches by a massive margin. He’s already getting the damn ball.
First, please call me Wayne. Mr. Spooner was my father. Second, it’s not about the number of touches, it’s about the type. In Game 1, Tatum was able to catch, drag help, and then kick out. In Game 2, that strategy went out the window, over the hill, and finally crashed into the side of a mountain a la Wile E. Coyote.
Photo By Winslow Townson/Getty Images
Tatum needs to be on the ball as the primary creator more often against this version of Miami’s defense. They’re switching often and are loathe to send help, which means sometimes you just need to beat them one-on-one. From there, help will have to come, and then you can get the defense rotating and use multiple drive and kicks or generate open threes.
Tatum’s dribbles per touch and seconds per touch are well below his season averages, which were themselves a several years low. He’s averaging 1.76 dribbles and 3.06 seconds per touch so far in the NBA Playoffs, down from 2.76 and 3.83 in the regular season. I’m not advocating for Tatum to endlessly dribble the air out of the ball in isolation, but he needs to function as our primary ballhandler more often until we can get the Heat out of this switch (almost) everything, help resistant defensive scheme. He can do it by running pick and roll.
Pick and roll efficiency including passes in the playoffs per Synergy. The Celtics need to run pnr with Tatum a lot more and do a much better job on Herro. pic.twitter.com/8q85atDZSi
Although he had a down year as a pick and roll handler in the regular season, he’s the third most efficient pick and roll ballhandler per Synergy (including passes) in the playoffs. He’s eviscerating the Heat every time we put him into that action (just try not to look at who is #1). There isn’t a single defender on their team that can check him 1-on-1 other than Bam, and we can run it with a variety of screen setters against a variety of defenders. Sometimes it will devolve into an isolation, but that’s fine — he can go after guys like Nikola Jovic in iso (this play starts with a KP screen, but NBA’s video just cut it off).
You can run it all over the floor and let him pick apart Miami with his passing, too.
Oh, and it even works against zone.
It just seems to me that Jayson Tatum looks by far the most comfortable of Boston’s ball handlers attacking whatever defense Miami throws at him. Jaylen was great in Game 2 but deploying him as a finisher is the perfect formula. Someone needs to be able to break down a switching defense than can, at times, force you into isolation possessions. No one on the Celtics is more equipped to do that than Jayson Tatum. Sometimes the Playoffs call for you to trust your star player and go from there, and Tatum is up to the task. Celtics in 5.
During the playoffs, Miami’s shooters come to life. How many times do the Celtics have to see it happen to finally make an adjustment?
During the regular season, the Celtics averaged 42.5 three point attempts per game, good for first in the NBA by a wide margin. The Heat only shot 33.7 threes per game, a below average mark in the league.
But in Game 2 of the teams’ first round series, Boston and Miami switched roles. The C’s only shot 32 threes, while Spoelstra’s boys got up 43 of them. The Heat hit 53.5% of those shots – the unequivocal reason why they won the game.
How did they get off so many threes, though?
Well, inferring from Joe Mazzulla’s post game comments, it appears as though allowing Miami to fire away from deep was a focus of Boston’s gameplan.
“I thought most of those were moderately to heavily contested, and so we’re going to have to make the adjustment on some of those,” Mazzulla said.
Jaylen Brown echoed a similar sentiment.
“We thought they were decent close-outs, but credit to those guys,” Brown said. “They came out, they played hard, and they had a record-breaking night.”
These remarks are nothing short of concerning. Unless we have massively different definitions of what a good close out is, Mazzulla and Brown are just flat-out off base. The Celtics failed to take Miami’s shooters seriously (sound familiar?) and allowed them to get off shot attempts without high-hand contests or pressure-filled closeouts. Look at some of these.
Al Horford is guarding Jaime Jaquez Jr. like he’s a dreadful three-point shooter. And he technically is; he only shot 32.3% from long range this season. But that’s not the point. Force Jaime to drive into a crowd and shoot a floater or a long mid-range – don’t just let him tee up an open three without providing any sort of contest. This is ostensibly a practice shot for the rookie. He plays for the Miami Heat, so when the playoffs come around, he’s going to shoot better.
Here, Jrue Holiday lingers in the paint to help as if Jayson Tatum is guarding Ja Morant. It’s Delon Wright, man. Holiday should be attached to Duncan Robinson and shouldn’t worry about a Delon Wright drive to the paint (which he doesn’t have a reason to worry about, considering Tatum is in excellent defensive position). Robinson doesn’t make Jrue pay for his lazy, undisciplined close out. Lucky.
Again, just a lazy closeout from Tatum. You need to have a hand up, especially when Caleb Martin has been hot against us for the last two seasons. Poor scheme, and even poorer execution.
The crux of the closeout issue comes down to Mazzulla and the Celtics being far too concerned with non-playmakers driving into the paint. Martin, Jaquez and Haywood Highsmith are not going to kill Boston with their five-on-four playmaking ability, so the Celtics have to close out harder and not give them an easy look from beyond. Miami getting hot from three is the only way they can win a game against the C’s, let alone four. So, just don’t let them get as many off. The Heat are not going to win the series on Haywood Highsmith floaters, I can tell you that.
The other glaring issue in Wednesday’s loss was the screen navigation from Boston. What is usually a massive strength of theirs turned into an Achilles’ heel. Take a look at some of these plays if you want to have your PTSD kick in even more.
This is about as bad as it gets from Jrue. I didn’t even know he couldlook like this while navigating a screen. He needs to be more connected to Tyler Herro. Besides that point, Jaylen Brown shouldn’t be helping from the strong side corner off of a proven three-point specialist. Poor game plan. Poor execution.
This one is probably a moving screen on Bam Adebayo. Shocker. But Derrick White doesn’t need to stay in the paint for as long as he does to help on a Nikola Jovic drive – that isn’t going to beat us. What is going to beat us is an open Tyler Herro three, which is what he gives up as a result.
Tatum just doesn’t exert the necessary effort here required to stop a flame-throwing Herro. You have to be more physical at the point of the screen. On this play, and many others throughout the game, Miami completely dictates the offense due to a lack of ball pressure.
The Celtics should be sending this one to the league office. Bam is aggressively moving. However, it’s just poor defensive angles and all-around effort from Brown, who needs to work harder to get back in the play after he gets hit.
A gameplan adjustment is needed, Joe. We saw Miami’s hot shooting – despite how lucky or rare it might’ve been – beat Boston last year. And if Game 2 is any indication, Mazzulla and the Celtics are content with deploying a similar strategy this season: let “bad” shooters shoot. But how many times do the Heat have to show Boston that their “bad” shooters will actually rise to the occasion during the playoffs for us to change our scheme?
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In addition to the nationally-broadcast NBA games highlighted previously, all other NBA games are broadcast on regional sports networks available in different parts of the country. So if you’re a fan hoping to use a streaming TV service to watch the local NBA team, you must check and see if the package includes the regional sports network with rights to air the games. The internet links listed below are suited mostly to a mobile device. Some streaming providers will allow you to sign in with an email and password from your existing account with a Cable, Satellite, or Telco TV Provider with no additional cost.
It is possible that the NBA with its broadcast partner TNT will offer a free streamed presentation of any particular game, subject to time slot and teams matched up. When checking whether your chosen team is to be streamed for a scheduled game, visit the NBA.com site and find the scheduled matchup(s) found along the pages left column. Locate the "Watch" link to click on which will then present you with a "How To Watch" selection palate to choose from. If it is available you will see Video Streams... Watch TNT offered on the palate to select.
Also, check to see if the TNT Overtime option appears within the NBA League Pass selection box (depending on what teams are playing) which should allow you some free streaming options to select from.
Keep in mind that free streaming may not run as smoothly as a premium video service. Revisiting these streaming sites will help you learn how to best navigate them. Sometimes there are ads to click through. There is a reason why it's free. If the stream is not working properly or lagging, just refresh the page or try another stream channel on the same network. Reddit NBA streams will generally provide a listing of newly activated streams, so check just before game time to find out what's available.
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