The Cleveland Cavaliers have been the subject of a few lengthy features in the NBA media this week, probably because sports editors wanted to make sure their big “how are the Cavs this good?” pieces came out while the team was still undefeated.
It’s hard to find a lot of juice for a mid-November NBA game, even with the manufactured NBA Cup also in play. But it was hard to miss what made this matchup special. The Cavs, at 15-0, were off to one of the best starts in NBA history. And they were about to take on the champs.
“Yeah, we knew,” Derrick White said. “Everybody knew that they were undefeated and coming into our building … we were all aware.”
It was a matchup so big, we should have expected the TNT feed to start buffering every five minutes. Unlike some other overhyped battles of the past week, this one delivered.
The Celtics built their big lead, the Cavs had a big answer, and then the teams went back and forth until the Celtics shut the door. The champs beat out the challengers, even though the challengers came in looking like world-beaters.
Boston sent a message. But it might not have been the message you expect.
“It's just about us … It's not about to prove to the league or anyone or anything,” Al Horford said. “It's a long season and we continue to make strides to be better."
Their actions belie their words. It’s not a secret that the Celtics have taken their competition lightly recently. They needed overtime to beat Toronto. They lost to Atlanta. They have routinely started slow.
But not in this one. They looked like a team eager to take on their opponent. In fact, they looked like a team trying a little too hard at the start of the game, crossing over into more frantic, rather than fast-paced, basketball. Once they settled in, though, they took off.
“I thought we were physical the entire game, which I care more about throughout the regular season is our physicality, our toughness,” Joe Mazzulla said. “The details are the second-most important thing, and we slipped a little bit of that in the third. But in the fourth, we picked up both of those things. But I thought we were extremely physical defensively, and I thought we were very poised and intentional on the offensive end. And I thought we made good reads.”
Those reads did what a lot of Boston reads do. They turned into 3-pointers. Some at the beginning of the game to build a lead, some at the end of the game to hold onto one that had been slipping from their grasp.
“I think we've been in so many moments together, so many big games, that we don't do anything spectacular,” Jayson Tatum said. “We just do the simple things. We do the right reads all the time, or most of the time, whether it's Cup game or regular season game or in the Finals. We know where each other is supposed to be. We work on reads all the time in practice, and regardless of how the game is going, or the shots are falling, just all about making the right read, and the game will reward that.”
The game also rewards great defense, which the Celtics finally played … at least for most of the game. It took a little bit of a break to allow the Cavs back into the game, but they found a way when it mattered most.
“We've been in that situation a million times where it's just like, it's time to win,” Tatum said. “It's time to lock in, guard your yard, help each other on defense, get a stop. And then on offense, find out who we're trying to attack, where we need to put guys at and making the right play. Like I said, we do the simple things really well, really often."
It’s really as simple as that for the Celtics. Things tend to go south whenever they try to break from that formula. When they follow the very simple plan, they are unbeatable. Even when they face a team no one has been able to beat, the simple things build a big lead and a win.
Did the Celtics send a message to the league? Sure, but it’s not like the league needed to hear it. A 15-game winning streak is nice, but everyone knew it would end at some point and the Cavs would have to fight for that top spot just like everyone else. Boston being the team to end it makes perfect sense.
But Horford was right about it being about themselves, too. Kristaps Porzingis is on his way back and that will change things, but the team has to still keep winning. Beat the Cavs will lead to splashy headlines, but struggling against the Wizards will prove one of Mazzulla’s go-to lines: Nobody cares.
“I care more about, can we do it again 72 hours … Can we do it again a month from now and a month later,” Mazzulla said. “We're not going to be at our best all the time, but the most important thing over the course is, can we just chip away and do that? So it was great that we did it tonight for the guys, they showed the level that we can get to. We just got to do it over and over again.”
