BOSTON – How simple basketball sounds, listening to the Boston Celtics talk. They’ve lost seven games in the playoffs, and after each, they’ve said they just have to get out of their way. They know exactly what the opposing team is trying to do, and they just need to be clear: make the right readings, take care of the ball.
On Tuesday before match 3, coach Ime Udoka answered his question billions about staff losses. “Most of them are overpowering, playing in the crowd, as I talk about quite often. It’s just not easy.” In Game 1 of the NBA Finals, a win, the Celtics got 3s wide open because their offense was “sharp and crisp.” In the 2nd game, a defeat, they committed 15 live strikes because it was not.
One by one, the players echoed that sentiment. No self-inflicted wounds, no problems.
In Game 3 of Wednesday, Boston committed seven losses of balance live. And guess what happened: the Celtics won, just like after all their other postseason losses. According to Jaylen Brown, who scored 17 of his team’s 27 points in the first quarter, it was patience.
“We want to play fast in the transition,” Brown said after the 116-100 win over the Golden State Warriors. “But when we settle in the middle of the court, we (want to) hit the space right, take our time and find the guys open and be ready to make plays.”
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Numerous times, Brown and Jayson Tatum, who had 26 points and nine assists, retreated near midfield to create a track to the edge. When the Boston stars attacked one on one, they were decisive, whether that meant taking him to the basket or finding an open teammate. They pointed out the mismatches, and even when they attacked one of Golden State’s strongest defenders, they knew help would arrive soon and they knew who would be open.
The Celtics had seen Draymond Green’s cat and mouse game movie around the edge, and they knew their readings had to be better. Udoka has pointed out that, unlike the Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat, their two previous opponents, the Warriors do not have an imposing shot block around the basket. By putting pressure on the edge, Boston forced Golden State to fight, leading to open shots and offensive rebounds. Marcus Smart recovered from a lower sample with 24 points and five assists.
“It’s just us being us,” Smart said. “Just keep driving the ball and try to find a great shot for our teammates and for ourselves. This Warrior team is doing a really good job helping each other on their defensive side. every time, and if you don’t, they’ll charge you. For us, it was just putting ourselves in the paint and doing the right game.
The beauty of the Boston attack is that when it works, it’s so simple. Tatum, Brown and Smart are the top three game creators, but all the others in the playoff rotation are at least a great connector. Once the first dominoes fall, the Celtics will probably look good.
So what do we have to do with the moments when your offense doesn’t work, when your ball handlers accelerate and their sand losses pile up? Given that they are two wins away from a championship, perhaps the right perspective is that sloppy stretches are just a normal flaw, but not a fatal one. Perhaps all that matters is how Boston manages them.
Five months ago, at the rally as a 24-point lead evaporated at Madison Square Garden, Udoka urged the Celtics to “get our composure back” and “take care of the ball, it’s self-inflicted.” At the TD Garden rally on Wednesday, as an 18-point lead evaporated in Game 3 of the NBA Finals, Udoka asked the team, according to longtime Celtics writer Steve Bulpett. ” Will you stop playing like idiots? ” The same, really.
The difference is that this time, Boston did regain its composure. Tatum recently cited the Jan. 6 loss to New York as the low point of the season, and has been cited many times as the turning point. The Celtics were 18-21 then, and then went 33-10, mostly because they cleared their act in attack. Tatum said after game 3 that they are now at their best “when we respond to difficult situations, when we respond to racing teams”.
As frustrating as it may be to see Boston make the same mistakes over and over again, look no further: they don’t need to keep proposing new solutions! The Celtics had their worst offensive performance of the entire season (81.8 points for every 100 possessions before waste time, for Cleaning The Glass) in Game 2, followed by a dominant performance in midfield. , glass and paint. simply doing what they were told to do.
Boston’s biggest advantage over the Warriors is that it has clarity. The Celtics are confident they will be fine as long as they are simple because they know they have a strength that no team can match: a whole starting lineup full of great changeable defenses, plus a couple more off the bench. The defense has led Boston through inferior offensive games, and it doesn’t have to sacrifice its space to put five elite defenders on the court. There is no other team in the league that can say that.
For Golden State things are more complicated. While everyone knows who the Celtics ‘top seven players are, there isn’t much separation between the Warriors’ role-playing players. The aspect of rotation, then, becomes a matter of what the technical body considers to be most important at a particular time. They can go with Gary Payton II for defense or Jordan Poole for play, Kevon Looney for rebounding or Nemanja Bjelica for shooting.
“We were plugging holes tonight,” coach Steve Kerr said after Game 3. Aside from a third-quarter stretch in which Stephen Curry got hot, “we couldn’t find that two-way combination.”
Almost everyone has to look for that kind of balance in the playoffs. In Boston. Therefore, despite responding better to defeats than to victories throughout these playoffs, Udoka believes that there is no anxiety about the match 4.
“I think we’ve seen what makes us successful,” Udoka said.