BOSTON -- The Celtics did justice by their confidence levels in defeating the Heat twice in a row to push their Eastern Conference finals to a Game 6 and cut Miami's lead to 3-2.
Yet, unlike Game 4, Game 5 wasn't much of a contest at all.
The Heat were stumped from tipoff, sluggish offensively while incapable of keeping the Celtics from putting together constant runs that slowly doomed them for another failed attempt at closing the series. It was highly uncharacteristic relative to the standard set by Miami back in its first-round series win over the Milwaukee Bucks, but not enough to hinder the confidence of the Heat locker room after Thursday night's 110-97 Celtics win at TD Garden.
"Who cares about mood? Like, we have a gnarly group so I think so much of that is overrated," Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra explained. "It's a competitive series, you always expect things to be challenging in a conference finals and one game doesn't lead to the next game. It's all the experience that we've had. It doesn't matter in the playoffs. Doesn't matter if you lose by whatever. We beat them by whatever in Game 3. It just doesn't matter."
Miami was a completely different team than what was shown in the first four games of the series. It was as if the Celtics swapped roles as the series leader, reducing the Heat to an offense that never stood a chance, and a defense picked apart by Boston's outside shooting.
Perhaps the most interesting part of Boston outperforming Miami in Game 5 was the fact that the Celtics didn't even play their best basketball. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for just 42 points yet the C's trotted their way to an 18-point lead to begin the fourth quarter.
Still, nobody on Miami's side was willing to budge afterward.
"Why would we lose confidence?" Bam Adebayo said. "When started the journey, nobody believed in us. Everybody thought we was gonna be out the first round. Everybody thought we was gone be out the second round. Now we're one game away. So, us, we've always had confidence and that's not gonna go away."
Even Jimmy Butler made a clear stance after scoring just 14 points -- the lowest in any games during Miami's postseason hunt.
"We're always going to stay positive knowing that we can and we will win this series," Butler declared.
