The 17 thousand or so fans who, finally, filled the TD Garden were hoping to watch the Boston Celtics pull off a stunner, but they mostly seemed to know they were here to say goodbye.
This wasn’t a house filled with expectations. When things started to fall apart for their team, the fans didn't squirm or get antsy. They didn’t scream or boo their team. They just watched. If anything, you could almost feel the collective deep sigh as Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden pushed the lead further out of reach.
When good things happened after that, they got loud. When the Celtics made a “run” to cut Brooklyn’s lead down under 20, the place roared like the lead was down to two.
“I wish we could have had a better opportunity at the end because it was so great to have our fans back in the building,” Brad Stevens said after the game. “I can't tell you, like, just being in the bubble, starting this year, going through the year, sometimes you're playing in front of 1,000 people, sometimes nobody. It’s just, like, this place is special, and the idea of being a part of a community, and a community watching a basketball game together, and especially here. I wish we could have had a better shot at the end, because I think that this place obviously wanted to blow the lid off.”
They wanted to. And the Celtics wanted to give them that chance. They really did. This wasn’t the ‘quit at the first sign of adversity’ Celtics, even though a game without Kemba Walker, Robert Williams, and Jaylen Brown might have justified a desire to stop delaying the inevitable. This was a Celtics team that did everything it could until the clock told them to stop.
“You can’t feel discouraged - we fought to the end,” Marcus Smart said. “It’s a great team with three great players that make tough shots. You tip your hat and continue to play. You just make every shot they continue to make as hard as you can. They make it, you tip your hat to them.”
I acknowledge how sad it is that this is cause for positivity. This Celtics team wasn’t supposed to be counting moral victories or feeling proud about playing hard after getting down 27. That’s something the Cleveland Cavaliers or the Oklahoma City Thunder were supposed to be happy about.
But for a team that lost to both the Cavs and Thunder during this maddening journey, giving us that reminder that under better circumstances they could have done more is all we have left.
“I don't have any issues at all with our approach, our effort,” Stevens said. “We've come back on several occasions this year and made it even more uncomfortable than we did there at the end.”
The Celtics, at one point, had Evan Fournier, Semi Ojeleye, Payton Pritchard, Grant Williams, and Romeo Langford on the floor. Stevens might have outsmarted himself trying to piece together the best matchups he could find considering the few options he had available.
“We made a lot of adjustments and the adjustments were worse because what that did was that separated the game,” Stevens said. “We got too scrambled, we scrambled too much after some of those difficult shots early.”
Once these Nets separate a game, it’s hard to get it back. The Celtics managed to do it in Game 3, but doing it again on a night like this was never really a possibility.
“We’re playing against a great team with three great players and a great surrounding cast. It’s tough, but you have to continue to fight,” Smart said. “I’m proud of the way we fought tonight, though we didn’t come out with the win and it didn’t come out our way. We have another game, another chance to come out and fight.”
At this point, the fight is all Boston has. They can respect themselves, the game, and the opponent by making sure they make it as tough as possible in Game 5.
Maybe they’ll give Celtics fans one more chance to pack this building and hope for the best, but it’s probably more likely that the TD Garden bull gang can put the floor they picked up before Bruins-Islanders Game 2 into deep storage. At this point, it might just be best that the last bit of basketball that floor sees this season is the one where they showed the most heart.