The Celtics could smell blood in the water.
The 19,000 individuals draped in green and white in the TD Garden stands concurred.
Boston sure wasn’t making things easy on itself (par for the course), but still was clinging to a six-point lead with just 7:32 left on the clock on Friday night.
Seven minutes and 32 seconds separated the Celtics from a commanding 3-1 series lead against the Warriors. Banner 18, once a fleeting daydream during those dog days of November and December, was finally going to be within reach.
Just about everyone was doing their part in some capacity. Even with some turnovers, Jayson Tatum had his double-double with 23 points and 11 boards. Jaylen Brown continued to defy physics with every clang off the glass that sank into netting. Rob Williams pulled down 12 rebounds and also orchestrated some corner treys off of slick feeds from the post.
The Garden crowd pulled on the same rope.
After objecting to the salty rhetoric cascading down from the rafters in Game 3, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were graced with the same Boston-based hostility that is usually only doled out to out-of-towners that stole a space saver following a nor’easter.
With C’s fans tossing salvos four-letter declarations against both Thompson and Green, two of the primary engines on Golden State’s roster sputtered (7-for-17 shooting from Thompson, 1-for-7 shooting from Green).
The only flickering spark of hope for the Warriors was going to lie in Steph Curry — a sharpshooter who, as John noted hours ahead of tip-off, was going to have to try and topple the C’s by himself.
It was a scenario that the Celtics would welcome, so long as the rest of the Dubs’ weapons were stymied.
But be careful what you wish for.
All things considered, Boston’s efforts at hampering the rest of an opposing roster and putting the fate of a series (and a season) into the hands of just one player — even a superstar — is a pretty tried-and-true strategy.
Well, it is against most superstars. But as we’ve seen for more than a decade now, Curry isn’t just a superstar. He’s a cheat code.
In some respects, trying to stem the tide against a wave of Curry trey balls is like trying to mold a wall of sand to stand fast against a tsunami. It’s an unstoppable force of nature — and there’s nothing you can do to quell it.
“Just stunning,” Steve Kerr said of Curry’s play on Friday. “The physicality out there is, you know, pretty dramatic. I mean, Boston's got obviously, best defense in the league. Huge and powerful at every position, and for Steph to take that -- that kind of pressure all game long and still be able to defend at the other end when they are coming at him shows you, I think this is the strongest physically he's ever been in his career, and it's allowing him to do what he's doing.”
Perhaps the Celtics’ best coping method in wake of Friday’s eventual Game 4 loss is to simply shrug their shoulders and tip their cap when an all-world talent takes over.
But Boston’s inability to put Golden State into a 3-1 stranglehold was a two-fold disaster.
As painful as it was to see Curry drop 43 points in a momentum-shifting victory, the manner in which Boston facilitated the Dubs’ late-game comeback — trying to beat Curry at his own game in search of that decisive knockout punch — made it an even harder pill to swallow.
The Celtics are more than capable of sinking shots beyond the arc. On some nights, they can even shoot a team like Golden State out of the gym. But in crunch time, the Celtics went for the kill shot by trying to match Curry with a deluge of 3-point attempts.
And trying to best a player like Curry in a 3-point contest is a bit like going cage-diving with a Great White — and forgetting to lock the gate.
If you’re stepping into an apex predator’s domain, you’re just asking to get shredded into chum.
Of the 21 total field goals that the Celtics attempted in the fourth quarter, 13 came from 3-point range.
And after building that six-point lead with 7:32 to go, the Celtics scored a whopping six points the rest of the way — sinking a pair of treys, and missing six more from beyond the arc. And as Boston’s offense short-circuited, Curry and the Warriors took over — with Curry delivering a dagger with a 3-ball over Derrick White.
Again, not much you can do here.
“We got some good looks from three. But other than the one that Al made -- I wouldn't say we got stagnant,” Ime Udoka said. “We did get some good shots off, but we would like to get a little bit more downhill and get some things to the rim and kick out. Credit to them. They stepped up defensively when it counted. Our offense wasn't as sharp as it needed to be, no doubt.”
There are plenty of other factors that contributed to Boston heading back to the Bay Area stuck in a 2-2 deadlock.
In a familiar narrative, the Celtics failed to take care of the basketball by way of 16 turnovers. They missed five shots at the free-throw line.
All recurring flaws. All missteps can be corrected — and have been during the numerous bounce-back outings that Udoka’s club has put forth so far during this title run.
But Friday offered another stark lesson for a C’s team desperately trying to get its foe on the ropes.
Don’t try to outshoot a guy like Curry in crunch time. Because, in a blink of an eye on Friday, predator became prey on the parquet floor.
“Yeah, he wasn't letting us lose,” Draymond Green said of Curry. “That's what it boils down to. You hear all the noise for a day or so, and I could tell in his demeanor the last couple days, even after Game 3, that he was going to come out with that type of fire. And he did, and we were all able to follow it.”