Here’s the good news from Game 1: YouTube TV crashed partway through the fourth quarter, sparing some lucky Celtics fans from a rerun of last year’s Eastern Conference Finals low points.
The app saved them from themselves, which is more than can be said for this team.
“We won three out of the four quarters. We lost one quarter, because we dropped our sense of urgency,” Joe Mazzulla reasoned after the 123-116 loss.
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It might be easier to stomach how the worm turned in the third quarter if it wasn’t so familiar.
Bad passes. Dribbling off shoelaces. Getting picked off in the paint. Boston looked fresh and clean in the first half, heading into their locker room with just five turnovers to the Heat’s nine. But they doubled their tally in the second half, finishing with 15 goofs — 10 of which came from stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined.
This 2023 squad came up just one turnover short of last year’s 16-turnover catastrophe that landed that team down 1-0 to start.
The third quarter might be easier to digest if Boston hadn’t given up 46 points — the most surrendered in one quarter by any Celtics team in playoffs history. Despite Brown’s insistence that this team has an elite defensive identity, they have a pesky habit of leaving corner threes open when the other team is shooting well, as Malcolm Brogdon did with Max Strus late in the quarter.
Yuck.
Maybe the lapses would make more sense if the Celtics had no history at all with the Heat, or if they had no idea that Miami has an entire motto — HEAT CULTURE — about out-hustling and out-working their more talented opponents.
Mazzulla wouldn’t hear any of that postgame, asserting the team played harder in the first half.
“We were prepared,” he said. “We had the right mindset heading into the game. We played harder than they did, and then they outplayed us for one quarter.”
Mazzulla’s message would ring more true if Brogdon hadn’t shared an anecdote at practice before the series about how locker room leader Al Horford had to get the team to tighten up and focus through drills before Game 1.
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Or if Brown didn’t straight up say the team came out too loose.
“It’s a choice. It’s a decision, just come out and play with a different mentality,” Brown said. “We came out a little too cool, like it was a regular season game. Come on, it’s the Eastern Conference Finals.”
Then there was the 13-1 run without a Boston timeout. When Mazzulla was pressed on why he didn’t call a timeout during that period, he pointed to the two times he pressed pause in the first half. In this case, point guard Marcus Smart backed up his coach’s quietness.
“The only thing we needed to adjust to was picking up our physicality and playing some damn defense,” he said. “That’s the only thing they switched.”
Fair enough, but it doesn’t hurt to check in when guys are drowning in the pace of a run. Everybody needs a reminder.
Fortunately for the Celtics, it’s Game 1. They have plenty of time to watch tape, get back into the Auerbach Center and leave the past in the past.
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