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At first, nothing worked out for the Boston Celtics. They missed 11 of their first 12 shots in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals on Friday, and were lucky enough to fall behind by just seven points at halftime, considering all the Miami Heat’s second-chance and free-throw opportunities. .
And then they came to life. On the verge of elimination, Jayson Tatum bought properties in the paint and the free throw line. Daniel Theis was all over the place at both ends, defying shots and floating hits. Kemba Walker got going on pick-and-roll, Marcus Smart hit a 3-step back, Jaylen Brown filled in the gaps and Boston put on a massive season-saving run.
Tatum finished with 31 points, 10 rebounds and six assists in the 121-108 victory, shooting 8 of 22 but making 12 of his 14 free throws. Brown had 28 points and eight rebounds. Walker added 15 points and seven assists, but his game record plus 21 was no accident: Much of the Celtics’ success in the second half relied on him getting into the teeth of the Miami defense.
Goran Dragic kept the Heat spinning, finishing with 23 points on 8-of-17 shooting, but fouled with four and a half minutes remaining. Duncan Robinson had 20 points, but 17 of them came in the first half. Bam Adebayo and Jimmy Butler each scored eight points and eight rebounds, but once Boston got going, Miami couldn’t put the braces back on.
The Heat threw a measly 7 of 36 from deep, and their offense collapsed as Boston’s rim protection improved. The Celtics led by up to 19.
Miami leads the series 3-2. Game 6 is Sunday. Here are three takeaways from Friday night’s showdown.
1. The Celtics are here!
After the backlash, coach Brad Stevens told the team that it was the first time they had played Celtics basketball in a few games. His defense was building offense, his 3s were finally falling, and the Heat defense was feeling the pressure.
When a reporter asked Stevens about Boston getting to the rim, he said it had been an emphasis since training camp began almost exactly a year ago. When asked by a reporter about contesting Miami’s jump shots, he said the same thing.
“That’s a great emphasis for us, not just to stop the ball but to shoot and play with multiple efforts and challenging shots,” Stevens said. “This is all like going back to basics.”
Brown said the Celtics had to attack the basket with intensity even though the Heat’s distance can make it look like there are no driving lanes. Boston did that, and the offense seemed to have a lot more juice.
Although the Celtics could have looked However, more active, Brown attributed the change to an improvement in the way they channeled their activity, not the mere amount. At halftime, he said, Walker told the team to calm down: Boston hadn’t come out flat, it had come out tight.
Brown said the Celtics were “playing a little bit fast, a little bit anxious,” and once they were in control, they threw the ball better, played better on defense and “looked like the team we all know and love.”
Across five games, this series has been both competitive and confusing. Take Boston’s offense against Miami’s 2-3 zone, for example: the zone clearly upset the Celtics in Game 2, but they had scored pretty well in Game 1. When they managed to penetrate the dribble and accumulate points in the paint a couple of days later, it seemed they had solved the problem. But his pace has been on the rise and fall since then, both between games and during them.
Boston has tweaked its lineups and approach, but the entire time it has been running high ball screens and trying to generate splashes of paint. The goal of the zone is to mess with the Celtics’ system, make their playmakers hasty or indecisive and keep Adebayo close to the basket. As encouraging as this win was, that zone has still worked more often than not, and there’s no guarantee Boston will. this team again next game.
2. Big decisions
Stevens did all sorts of weird things with his rotation: Gordon Hayward at point guard, Grant Williams alongside Enes Kanter on the front court, when the Celtics were struggling. Their much-discussed little lineup – Walker, Hayward, Brown, Tatum and Theis – had a short season but didn’t bother the Heat.
“They haven’t really played much together,” Stevens said. “And I think the threat on the edge of the greats makes a big difference to our offense for us. We will certainly have opportunities to go back to that, but there is no such obvious answer with big or small. I think Miami does. Great job. punishing you when you get small, filtering low so you can’t change, pausing the screen briefly, bouncing off it. And then it’s harder to score because Bam doesn’t really lose anything protecting a little one. “
Ideally it would be nice to see the lineup run a bit longer, but this is a perfect explanation for the downsides. If the centerless Celtics stop and run, that lineup can be devastating. In this series, however, Adebayo is a matchmaking problem, so Stevens has to be selective.
Kanter played 10 minutes, almost entirely in the second quarter. Unsurprisingly, this was a balancing act: it helped get Boston’s offense on track, forced Miami to reverse coverage, and had a huge target on its back at the other end. Boston was plus-3 in his minutes, which should be considered a success.
Down the stretch, Stevens went with the guys he fully trusted. Brad Wanamaker did not play in the second half, and no one beyond the Celtics’ “six starters” took to the court in the fourth quarter, despite Walker fouling halfway through.
This will be something to monitor Sunday (and possibly beyond), especially considering how much better Miami had been in the second halves as of Friday. Hayward has hit the 30-minute mark in each of his three games since returning from an ankle injury, and Theis sometimes fouls too often to play heavy minutes. Typically, this is when rotations get shorter.
3. Bam blames himself?
Adebayo was dejected after the defeat. He said it was a slow pace, he didn’t anchor the team as he usually does and missed shots he should have made.
“This game is up to me,” he said. “I played terrible. And that can’t happen. And I know. And I feel like I disappointed my team.”
This is admirable but questionable, and Butler accurately said he was on the overall team. The Heat seemed to let errors run wild in the third quarter, and coach Erik Spoesltra suggested that collectively they let their cold shots carry over to their defense.
The truth is, unless Adebayo is making mistake after mistake, and there hasn’t been a game like that yet, Miami’s defensive struggles will almost never be just him. He’s a special defender, the kind of player who can clean up a lot of mistakes, but it’s not like the Heat will channel the ball to him throughout the game like the Utah Jazz do with Rudy Gobert.
Adebayo is almost unmatched when it comes to switching bases and making plays as an auxiliary defense, and Boston is smart enough to try to turn these positives into negatives. When choosing a perimeter playmaker, the Celtics are trying to move the ball to someone else and take it out of the equation. They are also getting better at recognizing when you are overly anxious with their help and timing their cuts when you are at the bottom of the zone. However, if you ranked the Heat’s vulnerabilities, these things wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of the list.
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