Spending one’s existence dancing on the edge of a razor blade leaves one prone to cuts.
The Celtics, the second seed with two All-NBA players in their starting five, with home-court advantage in their back pocket, have now fallen into an 0-2 hole against Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat.
Boston’s notorious penchant for flirting with disaster has brought them face to face with their basketball mortality before, but now they're playing one-on-one with the grim reaper. Instead of doing everything they can to put as much distance as possible between them and him, they're tugging on his robe.
More than any other series during this open championship window, including last year’s against Miami, these two games have exposed more flaws than an HD camera on Liz Lemon.
As much as I hate to use this word to encapsulate the difference between these two teams, I really have no other choice: Butler and the Heat have swagger, and Boston does not.
Trust me, I’m aware that building a story off a team’s swag is about as hackneyed as sports writing gets. But sometimes the tropes are accurate.
There's just something in the way Butler carries himself in these moments. He’s not worried about some magic formula for winning. He’s not concerned with whether he’s generated a look that gives him some mathematical advantage. For Butler, the best shot is the one he’s taking.
Give him single coverage and he’ll find himself a clean look. Send a double his way and he’ll make the pass.
“I think our game plan is kind of simple in the fourth quarter, if I'm being brutally honest. It's kind of like give me the ball and move,” Butler said. “I'm tasked with making the right play. Sometimes I shoot the ball. Most of the times I shoot the ball. A lot of times it's pass to the open guy. I pride myself on finding that open guy, I really do.”
Swagger is simply confidence plus attitude. Butler has confidence in himself and his teammates because everyone is working their butts off for one common goal. They all know that if they are precise and active, they will find their way to baskets.
Duncan Robinson backdoor cuts? Sure.
Caleb Martin staying with a play after getting blocked and finding himself open in the corner for 3? You bet.
And all the while, there's Butler working just as hard as everyone but also being calm and poised.
“It's not about the schematics or the X's and O's,” Erik Spoelstra said. “You can invent a new defense. If you're not committed to doing tough things -- that's what this is about, doing tough things. These guys are not easy to defend. You have to be committed to doing the multiple efforts to contain, to get to the three-point line, to contain their drives. They do all of that, and then they crash the glass, whether in the man or the zone. But our guys have kind of wrapped their mind around that, how tough it is in the postseason.”
That's the attitude that's made the difference so far. While Butler and his buddies trust in each other and the work, Boston’s stars look blankly at officials or the bench hoping for some kind of bail out after another mistake.
The Celtics have been painting by numbers all season long. They are a team built on mathematics and formulas that dictate shot quality, numbers of possessions, and hitting certain benchmarks. That math has been the primary driver of how they score, primarily by seeking out as many 3-pointers as possible.
And that works pretty well in the regular season. Teams are so caught in the grind of game after game in city after city that they simply rely on doing the things they do well and hoping that's enough to beat whichever team is in front of them on any given day. For 82 games, the math will bear out that formulaic basketball will pay off
But the second season is a different beast. When everyone knows everything you want to do, games often come down to a battle of wills and precision. It’s about focus, knowing what you’re doing, and doing it well. Execution is all about confidence. Panic is all about a lack of it. And Boston gets pretty panicked down the stretch.
“If you have turnovers and offensive fouls you're clearly not making the right play,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I think that you have to make better decisions. So, when we get into situations -- if you run a guy over, someone was probably open.”
When Jayson Tatum ran over Butler, Jaylen Brown made a halfhearted review gesture while Al Horford stood there with his arms out looking confused. The Heat then came down the floor and got four shots in their next possession because they kept fighting. They refused to lose that game.
The Celtics have a ton more talent on their roster, but they don’t have the swagger Miami brings to games. They're not even close. Tatum is a first-team All-NBA guy but he isn’t even close to bringing that same swag to the floor. Neither is Brown.
They're both actors reading from scripts. Butler is the improv guy. Tatum and Brown are immensely talented, but they seem to play the game the way they think All-NBA guys should play; that in certain spots they MUST be the guys to make a play, no matter what, instead of moving the ball, getting the defense moving, and finding whichever openings materialize.
Butler and the Heat keep winning because they all work together as a group. They are the epitome of my mantra of the right guys getting the right stats when basketball is played the right way.
Sometimes confidence means getting out of the way and letting someone else do something sometimes.
But that's not these Celtics. For all their talent, they are a milquetoast contender. They are fully capable of winning a championship, even now, even after all of this, but there's nothing about this team that makes you think they want it badly.
How could they? They have a losing playoff record at home. They casually give up big leads all the time. They crumble in the clutch more often than not.
If they're hitting 3-pointers, they're world beaters. If those shots are falling, their defense hits another level, they pile up the runs, and they beat the brakes off teams.
But that's the only way they can do it. They don’t do anything else. Their entire basketball identity is wrapped up in doing math every time down the floor.
Miami doesn’t care about that. They just want to win, and they’ll do it with a guy drilling 15 footers on the right baseline all night if they have to.
As the late night became early morning, the cleaning crew in the TD Garden started popping balloons that adorned the concourse. It was an apt metaphor for what had happened down on the floor a few hours earlier. As Butler reveled in Grant Williams’ attempted trash talk, he popped Boston’s hopes of following their usual postseason script. He walked off the floor yelling to everyone and no one about his greatness and how Boston had no answer for him.
He’s right. Boston has a Jimmy Butler problem. And math isn’t going to be where Boston finds the answer.