Saturday’s contest at Fiserv Forum backed up Jayson Tatum’s claim that no team in the NBA plays harder than the Celtics.
Boston was not very good offensively in Game 3 of its second-round series with Milwaukee. The Celtics really struggled on that end of the floor in the third quarter when the Bucks extended their lead to double digits and flirted with opening the floodgates.
But the visitors never let the game get out of hand. Instead, they kept their nose to the grindstone and willed themselves back into it. The Celtics eventually fell short and suffered a two-point loss, but their resiliency can serve as a silver lining and a source of optimism moving forward in the best-of-seven set.
That was part of the message Celtics head coach Ime Udoka relayed to his team after the game.
“What I said back to the group: we didn’t play great offensively in the first half at all,” Udoka told reporters, per Celtics.com. “We defended at a high level to keep them to 46, but only had 50 ourselves. We weren’t as sharp as we needed to be offensively. But after a poor third quarter on both ends, that we could rally back, the message is to continue to guard the way we have, other than that third quarter, and then get our offense clicking a little bit more.”
Boston in Game 2 proved it’s more than capable of bouncing back from a performance that wasn’t to its standard. The Celtics will try to do so again Monday night when the sides meet for Game 4 in Milwaukee.
