The season only had a dozen games when Boston Celtics president of basketball operations Brad Stevens dismissed rumors that the team was looking to change its striker, Jaylen Brown. These rumors persisted in January, when the team entered the new year with a record under .500, and there was growing concern about whether Brown and fellow star Jayson Tatum could coexist.
On Wednesday night, when the Celtics defeated the Golden State Warriors 116-100 to take a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals, those trade rumors seemed prehistoric, or at least as old as the original Jurassic Park. .
Brown provoked the Celtics early, and ignited his team and the public with 17 points in the first quarter. Marcus Smart, the league’s defensive player of the year and himself the subject of a former trade talk, stifled any threat from Golden State with timely cubes. Tatum got off to a slow start and hit his late pass, finishing off the Warriors with 15 points in the second half. The trio combined to score 77 points, serving as Boston’s top shooters and players, providing the team with the class and energy it lacked in the second game, and vindicating management’s decision to keep its core together.
“For us, it was just putting ourselves in the paint and doing the right game,” Smart said. “We took what they gave us, and that was it.”
It was the first game of the NBA Finals at the Boston Parks Court since 2010, and a Celtics star Paul Pierce was present Wednesday sitting in front of the court in a jacket. glowing green and white skin. The base also made its presence known, especially in the Draymond Green of the Warriors.
After presenting a true heel performance at Game 2, Green was greeted with a badass by the more than 19,000 TD Garden attendees. He was booed when he touched the ball and received a serenade with profane chants throughout. Even more crucial, the Celtics players did not back down from Green either.
This decision was captured by a sequence in the middle of the first quarter that began with Green blocking a Brown tray. Green had a few words for Brown, renewing his feud from Game 2. On the next play, Brown called for the ball and quickly beat Green in the dribble before turning it into a hard drive into the hole.
“[In Game 2], they brought us the heat. For us, that left a bad taste in our mouths because what we hang on to is the defensive effort and being a physical team, “Smart said.” It definitely woke us up a bit. We just wanted to get out, and if we had to get out here and play, the last thing was that when we got off that court we didn’t mean we weren’t physical enough. It worked for us. “
Green was the final alpha of Game 2, antagonizing and shaking a Celtics team that has embodied the steely toughness of its coach, Ime Udoka. Wednesday’s game in Boston had more chippiness from Green, but this time, the Celtics largely avoided catching the bait. Instead, they imposed their will with their characteristic hard play, dominating the cup with 15 offensive rebounds.
“We don’t like how we sometimes withered the last game, and that was a big highlight in the last few days,” Udoka said.
It wasn’t the Dark Warriors ‘artist who put the biggest test on the Celtics’ nerves on Wednesday, but his virtuoso partner, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson. After losing 12 in the half, Golden State mounted a furious rally in the third quarter driven by its sharp backcourt. Curry scored 15 of his 31 points in the period, highlighted by a blurry stretch that saw the Warriors take a brief lead, 83-82.
Boston regained the lead 30 seconds later, when Smart buried a three from an assist by Tatum. In the fourth, the Celtics relied on their best-rated defense to stop the game, keeping the Warriors just 11 points behind in the final period.
Udoka blamed the Boston greats for having to turn on screens and better defend the Warriors’ deadly shooters after the visitors made their third quarter. And it was Udoka, Boston’s first-year head coach, who was credited with hardening a Celtics team that had long been flirting with the title fight but could never break. He took over from a team that, having entered this season, had played three of the last five Eastern Conference finals but won zero.
Repeated shortcomings often cause a receptionist to be accountable to his staff, to consider whether it is time to shake his core, and to consider whether his players are good, but not enough.
On Wednesday night, Boston was rewarded for staying with its headlines.