The Boston Celtics will seek their first road win, taking on the Atlanta Hawks in Game 4 of their first-round series Sunday night.
With the pendulum swinging Atlanta’s way, Boston will be tasked with regaining that same momentum that exploited the talent gap between both teams in the first half of Game 1 when the Hawks trailed the Celtics by 30 points.
But in order to do so, the Celtics will need to vastly improve on one side of the ball that haunted them in Game 3 and allowed the Hawks to claw back into the series.
“We have to lock in defensively,” Al Horford said, per team-provided video. “We have to be better. We felt like we scored enough points. On the defensive end, we have to be much more solid and we’re looking to do that.”
Horford added: “We trying to play much faster.”
Unlike Boston’s first two games on its home floor, the Celtics played catch-up throughout the game. Hawks guard Trae Young and Dejounte Murray rewarded a stellar contribution from Atlanta’s reserve unit (44 points), connecting on a pair of highly-contested 3-point field goals to push the team’s lead in the final minutes of the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, the Celtics had no answers. When they needed a stop, they couldn’t find one. When the call for a heroic crunch-time basket was in place, nobody — including Jayson Tatum — was able to answer.
With a 2-1 series lead heading into Game 4, the Celtics will look to snag a victory on the road before returning to their home court for Game 5.
