BOSTON — The Celtics can’t be an easy team to root for, and they know that.
Boston was treated to another example of the Celtics’ up-and-down nature Thursday night, as they defeated the Miami Heat and kept their season on life support for the second straight game. After going down 3-0 in the Eastern Conference finals, the Celtics are now down just 3-2 and are within two games of their second consecutive NBA Finals appearance.
It just didn’t have to be this way.
It has been two straight years of the Celtics winning 50-plus games, earning the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference and promptly giving away playoff wins to extend series that have no business going the distance. They have played in three Game 7’s in their last six postseason series, and with a win in Game 6 can make it four. Jayson Tatum and company are 3-0 in those deciding games, by the way, which begs the question, why does Boston thrive among the chaos and struggle to put opponents away before they have no other choice?
“I wish I didn’t know the answer,” Tatum said following Game 5. “For some odd reason, even last year, we always seem to make it a little bit tougher on ourselves. What I do know is that you can see the true character of a person and a team when things aren’t going well. Our ability to come together and figure things out when things aren’t looking good for us, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before. … I think that’s just a testament of our togetherness, of how bad we want it. We’ve got a room full of determined, tough guys that when push comes to shove — you look to the left or right of you, you believe that the guy next to you is going to do whatever it takes. We’re going to go down fighting and give it everything we’ve got.”
That precisely is what has made this team so infuriating to watch at points. Boston has specifically struggled at home in the postseason, holding a 12-11 record in its last 23 games at TD Garden. The back-and-forth between the crowd and players has even reached a boiling point at times, with Celtics fans booing them off the court multiple times this postseason, and needing to be challenged by Jaylen Brown at other times.
A free and easy Thursday night brought out niceties from both sides, though, with the crowd showering the C’s with “Celts in 7” chants, and Tatum returning the love postgame.
“I’m just glad we gave (TD Garden) something to cheer about,” Tatum said. “We’ve got the best fans in the league and up until today, in this series, we haven’t given them much to cheer about at home. I was glad that our performance matched the energy they were giving us, and obviously it raised our level. They’re a big part of what we do, especially at home, because we feed off of them a lot.”
This (obviously) isn’t the time for the Celtics to get comfortable, however, because a loss in the next two games will send them on an early vacation. The confidence that Boston has seemed to show over its past two games isn’t wavering, though, despite a daunting task of winning Game 6 in Miami.
“We’ve lost some crucial games at home and really had to just buckle down,” Tatum said. “We’re going on the road, backs against the wall. There’s nobody but us, and the coaches and guys in that locker room believe that whether it’s last year or last series that we were going to win. … I know I can count on, when I look to my left and my right, all hope seems to be lost, the game is on the line and our backs are against the wall, that everyone is going to go down fighting. That’s contagious, because we truly — whether it’s an ignorant belief, we do believe at all times that we still have a chance.”
