The Boston Celtics have been here before. It’s just last time, they were the Miami Heat.
Up 3-2, seemingly in command, and heading home for a closeout game, the Celtics are staring themselves in the mirror. They see themselves in the Heat, down and desperate, counted out before the opening tip of Game 6, hoping to beat the odds in a hostile environment.
“Yeah, you can't look past a team at any stage,” Grant Williams said after the team’s pre-Game 6 shootaround. “We were in that position last series, so we understand the intensity and physicality and everything that you kind of have to play with and expect to see. So for us, it's just a matter of now we're going from I guess Ime (Udoka) said the hunted to the hunter, so we have to do a great job of adapting to that and being consistent in our own mentality.”
The thing about being hunted versus being the hunter is that it’s easy to be the team that's been counted out; it’s easy to puff out chests and scream “us against everybody” when you’re supposed to lose because there are no consequences, just rewards.
The prey that escapes the predator just gets to go on living. The predator is the one that goes hungry.
Now it’s Boston stalking its wounded opponent. Miami is on the verge of being broken. Jimmy Butler’s knee isn’t right. Tyler Herro’s groin has cost him two games. Kyle Lowry’s hamstring is holding him back. They have been hounded into mistakes and have run head-first into Boston’s brick wall front line and now … now they're cornered, and that makes them dangerous.
“Besides the fact that anything is possible, we know what we are capable of,” Butler said after the Game 5 loss. “We know we can play some really good basketball and we know that we are going to play some really good basketball. It's going to have to start in this next game up in Boston. But I just think that we know that we can win.”
They can, and they have. Draymond Green went on TV after the Warriors finished off the Mavericks last night and declared emphatically “we’re playing Boston,” but the Celtics can’t get caught up in that. If they do, it will be the NBA’s “Dewey Defeats Truman” moment.
“We can't think that it's over with. We need to go back home like we’re down 3-2, with that sense of urgency that it's a must-win game, not relaxing because we’re up,” Jayson Tatum said after Game 5 in Miami. “It's possible. Obviously, we did it last series, so knowing that, talking about that, obviously enjoying this one, but not being satisfied knowing that we still got things to clean up, we still need to play better. The job's just not finished yet.”
This is self-awareness, an important step in the development of a team and a leader, which is what Tatum is now. He’s still learning the ropes of the job, but leading his team to a closeout win in this game would be a big step forward.
“I love the maturity of Jayson Tatum,” said NBA analyst and former 13 year NBA veteran Antonio Daniels on the latest Locked On Celtics podcast. “He has grown into a leader because he is talking about things that leaders discuss. So when he’s talking about not taking the Miami Heat for granted, he referenced all the way back to the Milwaukee series. He says, you know what? We went into Milwaukee and won a big Game 6 too, and then we had Game 7 at home. So he’s basically switching places with the Miami Heat. I love the way that Jayson Tatum, not just as a player, but also as a leader, has grown right before our eyes throughout these playoffs.”
Tatum has been here before. So have Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, and Al Horford. But that's as far as they’ve gotten, and that's something that will be seen as a failure if it’s as far as they ever go. They’ve been very good, but can they get to great?
“You can feel that inner drive to take the next step,” Ime Udoka said. “None of us are really fazed by this. It's just more about business as usual. Three series is different, all the opponents are different, and we really approach it that way. It's not looking at the big picture of the Finals, it’s really the task at hand and I think our guys going through it before, but also wanting to take that next step in their careers and their progression, is all playing apart.”
They can prove that tonight. If they are going to be the predator, they need to approach this game with that mentality and finish this as quickly as possible.