MIAMI -- Joe Mazzulla had two days to stew; to pour over the game film and pick apart every little detail of what the Miami Heat did to them in Game 2 and unleash his adjustments.
“We didn’t make too many adjustments,” Mazzulla said after a 20-point romp over Miami at the Kaseya Center.
Oh. Okay then.
“We played a little bit harder, a little bit tougher,” he continued. “We dictated the physicality and the tempo of the game, and it’s the simple things that you have to do under a high level of stress or level of adversity.”
Basically, Boston played better and it went better, because the Celtics are the much better team. And that's something that everyone knows.
The Celtics never needed to find the answers for what Miami was throwing at them because they already had them. And not in some kind of Disney fairytale “the answer was inside you the whole time” kind of way. It was always in a “just play the way you can play and end this series quickly” way. And you could tell when Jaylen Brown explained some of the things they did differently in this game.
"No dare shots, respecting those guys capability,” he said. “They are NBA players and they can make shots on any given night so treating them accordingly, closing out, just making them uncomfortable."
A lack of respect is a bit surprising for a team coached by a purveyor of the martial arts. Mazzulla of all people understands one of the basic tenets of the fight is respecting an opponent’s ability to beat you. And yet the Celtics still fall into that occasional trap.
When they do, a Game 2 is possible. When they don’t, when they forget who they're playing and just focus on being their best selves, we get what happened in Game 3.
No, I didn’t forget about Game 1.
The Celtics only hit two more 3-pointers than Miami on Saturday night and they shot a lower percentage. The Celtics won this game by 20 while shooting 29.7% from 3. They missed eight of the 10 corner 3-pointers they took and still led by 29 at one point.
Ultimately, Boston was +6 from beyond the arc, +4 at the free throw line, and +10 on 2-pointers.
“Every game has its own story, so you wanna take what the defense gives you,” Brown said. “You got a lot of skilled players on our team that could do a lot of different things, so making them pay for whatever they give up."
This game wasn’t about Boston’s offense. What the offense did was just enough to support their defensive effort. They could have scored zero points in the first quarter and still lead at the half 42-39. They only needed that one good quarter to get the comfortable lead. And it was the defense that led to that quarter.
“They’re a tough team to play against when they can set up their defense,” Jayson Tatum said. “So getting stops and being able to run in transition, find cross-matches and things like that. So the easy answer is we got stops.”
It’s always going to be the easy answer, even in a series where stops are easier said than done. What makes this Celtics team special is its ability to get to that level of defense AND offense. But shots aren’t always going to fall, which we saw in Game 2. They shouldn’t need them to fall in order to win games.
The Celtics can be frustrating when they have a bad defensive night. I guess that should be a compliment because people know how the Celtics are capable of playing and that sets a high expectation. And when that expectation isn’t met, it can get a little dicey around here.
The frustration among Celtics fans was loud after Game 2. The anger was hotter than the “White Hot Heat” motif around the Kaseya Center. A win like this calms the vitriol for a while.
“It was a long two days, you know? Just the way it burns inside after a game like that, a loss like that,” Kristaps Porzingis said. “I mean, probably having my worst game as a Celtic, it really burned inside, I'm not going to lie. So it was (a) long two days until I got another opportunity and I made some adjustments and didn't fall too much into their game of just physical, like, all the time. And that's what they want me to do. So … a completely different game today.”