Though not much went wrong for the Celtics on Monday night, Jayson Tatum felt a bit of frustration.
It wasn’t the same type of feeling he had after the Celtics lost Game 3 on a heartbreaking OG Anunoby buzzer beater. It wasn’t like Tatum’s reaction when the Celtics were outplayed by the Raptors in Game 4, either. After consecutive defeats like those, Tatum loved how the Celtics dominated Game 5. He appreciated how they locked into the game plan and competed hard enough to pull away in the first half. Tatum, after taking a 3-2 series lead, just wondered why the Celtics couldn’t repeat that type of effort every game.
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“If we can do it,” Tatum said, “then why don’t we do it every time?”
The easy answer is that no team does. These Celtics are grappling with the defending champions, a strong, proud and persistent group. The Raptors aren’t the type of team to go meekly. After dropping the first two games of the series, Toronto responded with a desperate, last-second win in Game 3. Then the Raptors controlled most of Game 4, tying a series that Boston could have all but won if it had just defended for 0.5 more seconds the previous game.
After all that, Game 5 promised to be the Celtics’ biggest challenge yet. They needed to forget the previous two games. Or maybe they needed to remember them, but move past them. Before tip-off, Kemba Walker said he checked his teammates’ hearts, whatever that means. He believed they had gotten “out-toughed” in Game 4. He knew they would need to be tougher in Game 5. As Walker sees it, playing hard is a skill.
“A lot of guys on that team have that skill and have that ability,” he said. “So, you know, I just checked my guys’ heart. And they showed it – big time.”
They showed it by limiting the Raptors to five points over the first five minutes, then holding the Raptors scoreless for almost four minutes after that. Toronto didn’t crack double digits until 23.3 seconds remained in the first quarter. By the end of the period, the Celtics had opened up a 25-11 lead. They kept going from there, pushing the margin to 62-35 by halftime.
The Celtics put Marcus Smart on Kyle Lowry to limit his impact, while Daniel Theis seemed to be everywhere on defense. His teammates operated at a similar level. Blocks and deflections sent the Celtics racing in transition. When Tatum rotated to force a Marc Gasol miss, the Celtics capitalized five seconds later with a tomahawk Theis dunk. After one Theis block, Jaylen Brown fed Marcus Smart, who dished it right back for a thunderous Brown slam. Defense generated offense, which is exactly what Brad Stevens wanted.
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In his own way, Stevens might have been heart-checking the Celtics, too. Even after Boston allowed 101.0 points per 100 possessions over the first four games – a mark that would have led the league over the full season – Stevens stressed defense first. How badly did he want to emphasize that? Asked about the starting lineup’s struggles to score in this series, he pivoted away from any conversation about the offensive production. Instead, he said the defense needs to improve during the first and third quarters. It was clear he wanted to set the tone on one end of the court. He wanted the Celtics to focus first on clamping down the Raptors, then on turning stops into points. Stevens’ team listened.
Considering the stakes and the competition, the first two quarters might have been the best all-around half Boston has played all season. The Celtics’ 27-point halftime lead ranked as the second-largest in franchise postseason history during the shot clock era. Only in Game 1 of the 1985 Finals, dubbed the Memorial Day Massacre, did the Celtics build a bigger halftime lead.
“We were really just trying to play hard, as hard as we could,” Stevens said. “They missed a couple of shots. We missed some shots in the first quarter but we were playing with great purpose. You could feel that from the get-go. So you just hope that you would knock enough in to kind of get something going. And we did.”
Brown did, especially. Though Games 3 and 4 went poorly for him, the wing said he didn’t change anything about his approach to Game 5. He went to bed the same as always. He woke up and watched film, then spoke to his position coach Tony Dobbins. If Brown shifted anything, he said, it was to focus on the idea that less is more. He didn’t need to make a big play every time down, just the right one. Other than that, he said, he changed nothing about his routine.
“Just because good games, bad games, ups and downs, it’s life,” Brown said. “It’s how it happens. Last game, I feel like I got some good looks that didn’t go down. This game I got some good looks, they went down. Same mindset was to keep shooting, if I’m open, don’t hesitate.”
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Brown could have let the disappointment dwell. He had lost Anunoboy on the final play of Game 3, then shot 2 of 11 from the 3-point arc in Game 4 while getting outplayed by Pascal Siakam. If the Celtics lose this series, Brown will have moments to regret. He played like he wanted no more of them. On his first touch, he drilled a 3-pointer. Over the next two minutes, he shot two more of them. If Game 5 was about the Celtics’ heart, well, he was going to show a difficult stretch could not impact his.
“Jaylen’s got big-time character,” Stevens said. “He’s got competitive character, he works, he’s focused, he wants to do well. It was good to see him knock in that first one, but I don’t think it would have mattered if he missed a couple early. He was gonna be aggressive. And that was good for our team.”
All along, Stevens has believed in this Celtics team’s character. He sensed a togetherness in training camp and preached about his team’s toughness all season long. Nothing tests a team like the playoffs, though. After two bad losses, Boston needed to regroup for Game 5. Against the defending champs, the Celtics responded so well Tatum wants his team to play just like that again.
“It’s not an easy task,” he said.
Not at all. It will be damn hard, especially against a gritty team like Toronto. The Raptors are brutal to kill. That’s what made Monday night’s showing so impressive.
“That’s the thing I take away,” Stevens said. “It’s not about winning a game, it’s not about winning three in a series now. It’s about just the process of growth, when you show that resilience. That’s what it’s all about. You can’t go through a playoffs without having heart breakers. You can’t go through a playoffs without something bad happening, and you just have to be able to respond. So I thought that’s what I take away. I knew we had good competitive character, and you really saw that on display tonight.”
(Photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)