CLEVELAND -- THIS was a playoff game.
Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse was electric from the beginning. The in-house announcer was hyped, the crowd was whipped into a frenzy, and the Celtics felt the hate flowing from the home fans.
“(That was) a great environment,” Jayson Tatum said after the Game 3 win. “This was fun to be a part of.”
Cavs fans know these two games in Cleveland might be the last NBA basketball they see for a while. Their expectations are not high, so they're playing with house money. And with Boston’s reputation for maybe not always coming through in the biggest moments, their hopefulness was buoyed by the possibility of actually taking this game.
Celtics fans are playing with real money when it comes to playoff tickets. They're looking to sell seats to this series to help offset the cost of the Finals tickets they’ll hopefully be buying. And because Celtics fans expect this series to be over quickly, there was no anxious, hopeful energy in the Garden.
At the same time, the Cavs were clearly not their best selves in Game 1, coming into the series fresh off a seven-game slugfest against Orlando. The Celtics were their best selves in Game 2, probably because Game 1 was so easy that they thought they could get by without their fastball.
“I think the series didn't get off to the start that you think it would because the two teams were under completely different circumstances, so I think you saw the real Cleveland in Game 2,” Joe Mazzulla said. “The discipline to continue to play (the right) way regardless of the other team is kind of the test of what everybody is trying to do in the playoffs.”
Game 3 finally provided a test for Boston. With a crowd that knew what time it was, literally and figuratively, and a Cavs team with Donovan Mitchell still in the midst of an incredible supernova run, the Celtics had an early fight on their hands. There was no early run to force a timeout like the first two games. The Celtics had to fight to build just a nine-point lead at halftime.
“We were just trying to get a win, understanding that we didn’t play as well as we wanted to in Game 2,” Tatum said. “It was a great test and opportunity for us to come out and respond and play better and play harder and all those things.”
The Celtics didn’t say it directly, but all of their comments between the end of Game 2 and the start of Game 3 were essentially admissions that simply playing better was the answer to their problems. Not once did anyone talk about stopping an action Cleveland was running to hurt them. There was no quote about a specific defensive wrinkle or a player who needed to be stopped.
No, at shootaround, Jrue Holiday said “I think we just got to bring up the intensity, more attention to detail. Especially how guys like to drive and get to the basket, and plays they can make. Just lock in a little more.”
Jaylen Brown said they “gotta be more aggressive, more ball pressure, and just be overall, more effort, you know, it was a little bit lax. We could be a lot better.”
They were better in Game 3, especially after halftime. Tatum put out a challenge to his teammates and they responded.
“We've had a tendency in the past to relax coming out of the halftime,” Tatum said. “We're usually winning coming out at halftime, so just challenge the group: Can we come out like our back is against the wall? Can we make them call the first time out? Can we come on like we're down nine?”
It worked. The Celtics didn’t fall back into that same habit, instead going up 23 at one point.
“It changed the game,” Mitchell said. “Give them credit. They came out with a sense of urgency. It's tough to come back from that.”
But the Cavs almost did. The 23-point lead eventually got back down to single digits. Cleveland’s desperation fueled a slow, methodical chipping away of Boston’s lead. The energy in the arena might have wilted a Celtics team of the past, but this time they kept their heads. Boston kept going to what they knew worked, and they got good looks most times down the floor.
“We knew what action we were trying to get to. There was a purpose behind every play,” Tatum said. “Didn’t always result in a bucket, but that's part of it, we’re gonna miss some shots. I think we just did a really good job of communicating our late game actions and what we were trying to accomplish.”
This is what playoff basketball is. It’s not going to be pretty all the time. It might not even be pretty any of the time. But the end result is what matters most. Boston did what they needed to do down the stretch to win the game. They got buckets and stops they needed to win comfortably.
There will be more tests to come for the Celtics, and maybe one of them will actually result in Boston playing a clutch game again. But for now, this will suffice. They hit the road, faced a desperate team in an incredible atmosphere, and did what they needed to do.
Now if only they could bring themselves to do that without losing a home playoff game first.