BOSTON — The Celtics have every right to feel confident heading into Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals.
That would have been a blasphemous statement if it was made in the days between Game 3 and 4, with Boston falling into an 0-3 hole in the series with an absolute stinker Sunday night in Miami. Things have quickly changed, however, with the Celtics now trailing 3-2 in the series and just a pair of wins away from making NBA history. The script has been completely flipped, with the C’s adopting a one-game-at-a-time mentality and rallying off a pair of impressive wins.
So, what has influenced the stark turnaround?
“Nothing special,” Jaylen Brown said following Game 5. “I think just being together in moments of adversity, staying on the same page and sticking with it. Doubling down on things that we need to do better, holding each other accountable has been the key. I think once we got ourselves together, we all looked each other in the eyes and said, ‘Hey, we’re not going out like this.’ “
“One, we represent the organization, but we also represent ourselves and our families, and obviously we haven’t performed the way we felt like we needed to perform. So that Game 4 was the start of the atonement, and now we’ve been able to pick up off that in Game 5 and hopefully we can carry it on to Game 6.”
If Game 4 was the start of Boston’s atonement, Game 5 was just a slight step forward on the path to it being complete. Let’s make no mistake about where the Celtics are at; they’ve made things entirely too hard on themselves against a team that is nowhere near as talented as they are. In a weird sense, that seems to be exactly what has driven them through the comeback process.
“I mean, Game 3, that was as low as you can be,” Jayson Tatum said Thursday. “The good part about being that low is you only can play better. It’s only up from there. I think part of it was just — being down 3-0, you understand how that’s never been done, all the talk about that. It kind of gave us a sense of, ‘Everybody is counting us out.’ We’re supposed to win. We were supposed to be done and I think we started to play a little bit more free, relaxed.”
In trying to finish off the historic comeback, Boston will need to find the fine line between playing free and relaxed, and being comfortable. There is absolutely no room for comfortability in the Celtics locker room.
We know that, they know that and the Heat know that. It can’t be a bad thing, though, considering the Celtics’ absurd track record in this exact situation.
