No team in NBA history has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series. But the Boston Celtics have seen it happen before with a professional organization they share the city with.
Celtics first-year head coach Joe Mazzulla, a native of Rhode Island, shared how he believes it’s important to remind his team of that feat by the Boston Red Sox. The Red Sox, as Boston sports fans will never forget, came back from a three-game deficit against the rival New York Yankees en route to winning the 2004 World Series.
“I think it’s important to build that perspective, have that understanding, and I think that helps us keep that narrow-minded focus that something like that has been done before,” Mazzulla told reporters Monday, one day prior to a win-or-go-home Game 4 against the Miami Heat, per CLNS Media.
“And especially being in this city, it gives us an opportunity to kind of spearhead that identity and that opportunity that we have and at the end of the day, that’s how we have to look at it,” Mazzulla added. “We have an opportunity and we have to take it one game at a time.”
Mazzulla noted he had not yet reached out to any member of that 2004 Red Sox team. He said his priority has been spending time with his team, building the connection and getting his club ready to go.
“I have the utmost confidence that we’ll compete, that we’ll play together, that we’ll be connected,” Mazzulla said.
The likelihood of the Celtics overcoming the three-game deficit, especially given how they were embarrassed in Game 3 at Kaseya Center on Sunday night, well, it’s difficult to envision. The Heat currently are -1200 to win the Eastern Conference finals after the Green opened -500, per BetMGM. It’s not a group that put forth any sort of fight or showed any mental toughness the last time it was on the floor.
But many felt the same way about that 2004 Red Sox group. And that turned out to be a historic sports moment in the city’s history.
