BOSTON — “I felt like this was one of the games where the emotion of what was happening didn’t affect our effort,” said head coach Joe Mazzulla.
The Boston Celtics had their worst quarter of the season on Tuesday night, allowing an 18-4 run to start the game. The Cleveland Cavaliers were making shot after shot as Boston stumbled out of the gates on defense and failed to hit their shots on offense.
All signs were pointing toward disaster, but unlike the pattern of years past, the Celtics didn’t hang their heads. Instead, they fought back.
“I think that’s a big thing for us,” Derrick White said of staying true to the gameplan. “I think in the past, you start off slow, and we kind of just settle and like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna eventually make them.’ But this time, we just continued to play the right way, making the right reads, staying in attack mode.”
Boston’s offensive process in the first quarter was sound, but shots just weren’t dropping. But rather than panicking and transitioning into an offense centered around hero-ball, they stuck to the gameplan.
Eventually, shots began to fall, highlighted by a string of three White threes in a row in the second quarter. By the end of the second, the Celtics had their first lead, and by the end of the game, they had been up by as many as 10 points late in the fourth.
The early deficit was reminiscent of last year’s Eastern Conference finals, as once the Celtics were down, it was tough for them to dig themselves out. That wasn’t the case against the Cavaliers.
“That was the closest to a playoff game I think we’ve had this year, from lineups changing, to matchups changing, to coverages [changing],” said Mazzulla.
From Cleveland’s tough shot-making to Boston’s fourth-quarter defensive adjustments that saw them send more pressure at screens, a playoff atmosphere filled TD Garden on Tuesday night.
Throughout the postseason last year, Mazzulla and the Celtics were criticized for their lack of adjustments, but against the Cavaliers, they showed growth.
In the fourth quarter, Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, and Max Strus combined for just eight points on 3-of-10 shooting from the field and 2-of-6 shooting from distance as the Celtics upped their defensive pressure and changed the level at which they were picking up screens.
An early deficit was often a recipe for disaster for last year’s Celtics. But against the Cavaliers, they proved that they may have learned from their past mistakes.
“This was a good win, especially just the way we started the game,” said Jayson Tatum. “It could have went south early, but we stuck with it. We were just thankful to only be down 10 at the end of that first quarter. But we were in great spirits. We weren’t discouraged.”
