Celtics head coach Brad Stevens put it best: Boston doesn’t have to win three games Friday, but they do have to win one.
The C’s find themselves trailing the Miami Heat 3-1 in the Eastern Conference finals after their 112-109 loss in Wednesday’s Game 4. They now have to win the last three games of the series to move on to the NBA finals.
Jaylen Brown, for one, believes the Celtics have what it takes to do so.
“… The good thing is we got another chance, another opportunity to keep playing. I believe and I’ll fight to the end. That’s how a lot of our guys’ minds are wired. So we just got to come out and take it one game at a time,” Brown said during his postgame video press conference, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage. “I believe that we can still come back, and win. We all have to believe it. We all have to come out and play like it.”
Kemba Walker and Jayson Tatum said much of the same.
“Leave it all on the floor,” Tatum said. “We just got to win one game at a time. We don’t have to win a series next game, we just to give it all we got. It’s win or game home, from here on out. It’s the approach we got to take.”
“At the end of the day, we got to find a way,” Walker added. “That’s really all we can do. And we can do it. It’s about pride. It’s about wanting to do it, and next game we got to come out and show it.”
And for Stevens, it’s not about the teams who have come up short after facing a 3-1 deficit, or even the teams that have pulled it off. It’s about his team, and taking the right mindset into Friday night.
“It’s hard to win a playoff game, right? It’s hard to win a playoff game both ways. We’re just looking at how can we play better Friday night, that’s the most important game of the season. And we need to play our best game yet. That’s it,” Stevens said.
“I don’t know what the historical odds are, and that doesn’t really matter. The situation we’re in we have to play well Friday. We don’t have to win three games on Friday, we have to win one. That’s going to be our focus, that’s going to be our attention,” Stevens said.
Game 5 is scheduled for Friday, tip slated for 8:30 p.m. ET.
