Greg finally admits he's a jinx after Celtics' Game 5 loss
It is hard to find reasons to be optimistic about these Celtics after Tuesday night’s lackluster 115-103 loss to the 76ers in Game 5 at TD Garden. With a chance to take control of this second-round series, Boston instead came out flat at both ends of the floor and now faces elimination Thursday night in Philadelphia.
One possible reason for Celtics fans to keep faith alive: Their team has been here before and overcome. Just last year in fact.
The Celtics also blew Game 5 at home in a tied second-round series last May, choking away a 14-point fourth-quarter lead in a devastating loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. As is the case now, all hope appeared to be lost.
Those Celtics, however, stared down elimination on the road and forced a Game 7, with Jayson Tatum’s 46 points leading the way. Then they won Game 7. In the next round, they would do something similar, blowing an opportunity to close out the Heat at home in Game 6 before bouncing back to win Game 7 in Miami.
Can this year’s Celtics draw on that experience? Marcus Smart thinks so.
“I’ve got the utmost faith in us,” Smart said Tuesday night. “We've done it before, so we've just got to go do it again.”
What will it take to do it again?
“It's not going to be easy. It's going to be a dogfight. And it’s who wants it more,” Smart said. “…If you're not willing to pretty much get dirty, if you're not willing to bleed, if you’re not willing to break something, willing to tear something going hard, then you shouldn’t be on that court, because that's what it is. That's what the playoffs are about. Hopefully you stay safe, but that's the mentality. You gotta go, you gotta be willing to risk it all for these games. And that’s the mentality we’ve got to have.”
Jaylen Brown wasn’t as interested in reflecting on last year.
“Last year is over with,” Brown said, cutting off a reporter’s question before it was even finished. “We gotta come out and be better than we were tonight or we’ll have a different ending.”
There’s validity to both approaches. Smart and others might be able to look at last year and find some confidence that might not otherwise be there right now. Maybe they can remember what it feels like to play desperate, to play with their backs up against the wall, because they certainly didn’t play that way Tuesday night.
But Brown is also right to point out that this year isn’t last year. Winning Game 6 in Milwaukee last year doesn’t mean the Celtics will win Game 6 in Philly this year.
This year’s Celtics are different than last year’s. Much of the roster might be the same, but the head coach is different, and it is certainly fair to wonder whether Joe Mazzulla can get as much out of this team in this situation as Ime Udoka did.
These Celtics did not play as well down the stretch this season as they did last season, when they entered the playoffs as the hottest team in the NBA. These Celtics do not play lockdown defense as consistently as they did last year. Whether they can now may very well decide if their season continues or not.
Tuesday marked the seventh time in their 11 postseason games this spring that the Celtics have allowed 115 points or more. Last year’s Celtics allowed that many points just once in 24 playoff games. They held the Bucks to 95 points in Game 6 and just 81 in Game 7. They held the Heat to 96 in Game 7 of that series.
We’ve seen the Celtics’ defense show up in this series -- in Games 2 and 3, when they held the Sixers to 87 and then 102 points. Unsurprisingly, those are the two games Boston won. The defense did not show up in Game 5.
“We dropped the ball tonight,” Brown said. “Couldn’t stay in front of nobody. Couldn’t get a stop when we needed to. Missed a lot of wide-open shots. Gave everything up that they wanted us to give up. … Just unnecessary fouls. Got in a little bit of foul trouble and that kind of threw our rhythm off. We have to be able to get stops and guard a lot better than we did tonight.”
If the Celtics can do that on Thursday and play the kind of defense they played when facing elimination last year, they’ll give themselves a chance to extend their season and return home for a Game 7 on Sunday. If they can’t, their season will be over two rounds earlier than last year.
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