Welcome to Fight Club.
Sorry, I’m going to have to violate the first and second rules from here on out.
The only way to explain this Celtics postseason, and this series in particular, is through the lens of the Edward Norton and Brad Pitt characters from the movie because the Celtics are two very distinct characters at the same time, and they don't function until they get hit in the face.
How else can anyone explain why Boston suddenly looks so damn good after being so meek over the first three games? Did they basically just stand there in front of Jimmy Butler and say “I want you to hit me as hard as you can” and then just wait for a shot to the face?
“I wish I didn't know the answer,” Jayson Tatum said after Boston closed a 3-0 gap in the Eastern Conference Finals to 3-2. “For some odd reason, even last year, we always seemed to make it a little bit tougher on ourselves. But what I do know is that you can see the true character of a person, of a team when things aren't going well, and our ability to come together, figure things out when it's not necessarily looking good for us. It's unlike any team I've been on this year and last year, just the core group of guys being able to respond.”
It makes no sense. It’s the opposite of the famous Mike Tyson line because Boston only seems to have a plan after they get punched in the mouth.
“Coming in, we were more relaxed and they snuck up on us and got us,” Marcus Smart said. “And these last two games for sure we definitely just wanted to turn it around. We wanted to go out there and leave it all on the court, and let the results fall where they may.”
Alright, fine. They snuck up on you. That explains one game … maybe two if we’re being generous. But three?
“That’s the thing about sneaking up on somebody – they’re not supposed to know you’re coming. So that’s what happened,” Smart said. “We didn’t know, we didn’t see it, and they got us. So it wasn’t like we were trying to have that mindset. It’s part of the game, it’s part of life, it’s part of the roller coaster of playing in the NBA at the highest level. You’re going to have ups, you’re going to have downs, but figuring out when you get down how to get back up, and that’s what we’ve done.”
All of a sudden, Boston has transformed into Tyler Durden. They’ve gone from soft and timid to badasses winning bare-knuckle fights with a cigarette hanging from their lips. They're out Heat-ing the Heat, shoving culture back down Miami’s throats, running up the score, and answering every challenge thrown at them.
“I think once we got ourselves together, we all looked each other in the eyes and said, 'Hey, we're not going out like this,'” Jaylen Brown said. “One, we represent the organization, but we also represent ourselves and our families, and obviously we haven't performed the way we felt like we needed to perform. So that Game 4 was the start of the atonement, and now we've been able to pick up off that in Game 5, and hopefully we can carry it on to Game 6.”
Miami is certainly going to have something to say about that. Fight Club can get ugly and Boston is going to leave Miami with some fresh cuts and bruises no matter what. The question for the Celtics right now is whether they have the fight in them to finish this thing off.
Celtics assistant coach Matt Reynolds spoke up recently, delivering some much-needed perspective to the team as the walls started to close in.
“The seasons are like nine months long, and we just had a bad week,” Joe Mazzulla explained. “Sometimes you have a bad week at work. We obviously didn't pick the best time to have a bad week, but we did, and we're sticking together and fighting like hell to keep it alive, and the guys are really coming together.”
Funny things start to happen when a team falls behind like Boston did. Suddenly “sources” appear out of every corner to say things like guys are pretending to like each other or that Mazzulla is on his way out. The noise gets pretty loud.
But one thing about this group is that they're great at circling the wagons. They did it at the beginning of the season when Mazzulla first got the job and they went off on a huge run. They are now in the process of doing it again after Mazzulla seemed to be on the edge of losing the job.
“We've lost some crucial games at home and really just had to buckle down, going on the road, back is against the wall, nobody but us and the coaches and the guys in that locker room believe that, whether it's last year, last series, that we were going to win,” Tatum said. “We've got a really connected group. We've got a group of determined, tough guys that, like I said, I know I can count on. I know I'm going to look to my left and my right when all hope seems to be lost, when the game is on the line, our backs are against the wall, that everybody is going to go down fighting and give everything they have.”
Welcome to Fight Club. It’s the oddest, most violent, impossible-to-figure-out path to self-discovery and salvation. It’s not the path that most of us would choose, especially because there are so many easier roads to get to the same place. And all those other choices don’t involve getting your ass kicked along the way.
But for some dumb reason, these guys thrive on it. They come off as soft and unassuming, but all they want is for someone to clock them in the face. It’s only when they're down that they finally feel alive enough to thrive.
“We truly -- whether it's ignorant belief, we do believe at all times that we still have a chance,” Tatum said, “that anything can happen.”