Celtics

A strange playoff series keeps getting weirder with injury scares and furious comebacks. It's difficult to tell who is best prepared to adapt.

So when he said that, I had all the confidence in the world to step up and make a shot.” He crashed to the floor, writhing in pain, and was helped off the floor and into the locker room. Lowry was a pest on defense, with heady play on offense and a calming influence, resembling the player he’d been when he won a championship in 2019 with the Toronto Raptors. He finished with 11 points, 6 assists and 4 steals. He immediately hit a corner 3-pointer to cut the Heat deficit to 10. A rescue plan for Miami came in the form of Strus, the undrafted third-year guard, who has taken minutes from the higher-profile guards Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro. He answered Brown’s jumper with a 3-pointer of his own, deflating the Celtics crowd. But it wasn’t just fast breaks: When Adebayo received the ball in the post, he would immediately pivot into the paint, rather than hold the ball and wait for the defense to respond. The first was in the third quarter of Game 1, when the Heat outscored the Celtics, 39-14. In the case of Adebayo, sometimes that meant receiving a pass in the half-court, then immediately sprinting up the court and going to the basket against the slower Al Horford. Miami continuously pounded the Celtics defense in the first half by pushing the ball. The other was in Saturday night’s opening frame, when the Heat jumped out to a 39-18 lead. The first star was Lowry, who has been absent for most of the playoffs because of a hamstring injury. But it was the return of two Heat stars that made possible Miami’s 109-103 win in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.

The Miami Heat stormed out to a 26-point lead over the Boston Celtics in Game 3 on Saturday night only to hold on for a 109-103 victory at TD Garden ...

In addition to the turnovers, the Celtics got another dud from Tatum, who finished with just 10 points to tie his lowest-scoring game of the postseason. The Heat were terrific to start this game, and deserve a lot of credit for how they started and then managed to hang on down the stretch without Jimmy Butler. That being said, the Celtics could have, and probably should have won this game. Kyle Lowry had not played since Game 4 of the Heat's second-round series with the Philadelphia 76ers due to a hamstring injury, and there was no clear timeline for when he might be back. He nearly matched his total from the first two games in the first quarter of this one, as he had 12 points to help the Heat build an early double-digit lead. By the final buzzer, Adebayo had 31 points, 10 rebounds, six assists and four steals in by far his best performance of the entire postseason. In the first two games of this series, though, he was largely invisible, finishing with a total of 16 points, 13 rebounds and three assists. Late in the game, with Butler out of commission, he stepped up again. He was demanding the ball early and often, and hitting an array of mid-range jumpers and shots around the rim. In the end, Butler's absence during the final two quarters was not enough for Boston to pull off the comeback as Bam Adebayo finished the win with a team-high 31 points to go along with 10 rebounds, six assists and four steals. On the other end of the spectrum, Jaylen Brown was fantastic for Boston finishing the game with 40 points and nine rebounds. Smart and Tatum actually returned to the game, despite the fact that their injuries seemed more severe. The problem only got worse on Saturday, as Smart, Jayson Tatum and Jimmy Butler all made their way to the locker room at various points.

Despite an injury to Jimmy Butler, Miami took the series lead in the Eastern Conference finals thanks to a career night from its star center in Boston.

It got a little gnarly out there and when it did, we were able to get the ball to Bam and just get something coherent.” It’s only one game in a back-and-forth battle of attrition, but this version of Adebayo incinerates whatever ceiling Miami previously had and, if sustained, entirely alters the calculus of this particular series. “Guys have to take ownership of that matchup and defend like we’re capable of.” He doesn’t get caught up in all the noise and everything. And you know, he really is the heart and soul of our group. “And I think we’ll be able to get him in places where he can be assertive and how he was all season.”

Two disastrous quarters have the Celtics down 2-1, making Game 4 a must-win before the series returns to Miami. Boston can't approach Monday's matchup like ...

To that point, Horford declared: "We are excited to be here. He went on to say, "that can't be the reason we lose the series." Tatum went on to say, "we've got to be better starting the game." When discussing the first 20 minutes of the game, Jaylen Brown expressed: "We started out flat. When it comes to not matching the Heat's physicality in this series, Udoka remarked: "We have at times. (We) started complaining to the refs and took us out of the game from the start.

Upon joining the New England Patriots in 2019, however, Harris began looking for things to do away from his day job as a football player.

I felt like I had a little extra juice going to work the next day." "I'm not co-signing, but that's what he said." "I didn't necessarily grow up the biggest Celtics fan.

The Celtics nearly erased a 26-point deficit Saturday night against the Miami Heat at TD Garden but fell just short in a wild Game 3 that featured injury ...

Brown stepped up in a huge way, pouring in 14 of his 40 points in the fourth quarter to help the Celtics roar back. Adebayo racked up 12 points in the first quarter alone, taking advantage of Robert Williams' absence to score at will in the paint. The good news: Boston got a combined 50 points from Tatum and Brown. The bad news: Only 10 of those points came from Tatum. After racing out to early leads in Games 1 and 2, the Celtics looked disjointed on offense in the early going and may have trailed by more than 21 points at the end of the first had Brown not bailed them out with 11 of their first 18 points. Tatum took a queue from Smart, however, and ran out of the tunnel shortly after to finish the game. Jaylen Brown exploded for a game-high 40 points to help the Celtics mount their comeback, while Al Horford added 20 points and 14 rebounds and Marcus Smart chipped in 16 points.

The Celtics had just smacked the Heat in Miami in Game 2, stealing home-court advantage to tie up the Eastern Conference Finals at a game apiece. As the series ...

But the Celtics have fans dreaming of an NBA Finals run and perhaps a championship. The C’s showcased their mental edge when they blew out the Heat in Game 2; that’s what they’ve done this entire season. “But disappointing to come out that flat in a conference final game.” But the Celtics have been mistake-prone — especially in games that aren’t necessarily a must-win. Just like the C’s predicted they would — it’s just that Boston still didn’t have a response. “We bounced back from Game 1 to Game 2, and they were going to do the same.

Maybe this is how it's going to be. Maybe the winner of these fascinating, brutal, unpredictable Eastern Conference finals will be determined not by which ...

There was one more significant injury in Game 3 – to the Celtics’ pride. Brown was one of the Celtics to escape the night without obvious injury, and he had a dazzling game in some aspects (40 points, 11 for 11 shooting on 2-pointers), but he had one assist to seven turnovers, and the Heat are repeatedly taking advantage of his careless ball-handling. It was not a good sign that the Celtics might have played their most inspired ball of the night during the minute-and-a-half when Tatum was out, with Jaylen Brown tearing off six of his 10 straight points in his absence. When Smart buried a 3 to cut the Heat lead to 72-62, the guttural roar of the Garden crowd may well have shaken the trains in North Station below off their tracks. It was easy to believe Smart was done, and in all probability so too were the Celtics’ championship aspirations. For a time, it seemed like the Celtics were going to create an individual comeback story that would be remembered forever, if only they could have completed the comeback to win.

The Miami Heat defeated the Boston Celtics 109-103 on the road in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Saturday to reclaim home court and take a 2-1 ...

Again, both players returned, but having no depth behind these guys, the Celtics are in a bit of trouble right now. Grant Williams and Payton Pritchard have stepped up at times in Boston’s second-unit, but they truly are a team that looks to play with just their starting-five. Moving forward, Adebayo must play with this same intensity and aggressiveness for the Heat to be successful. Not to mention, Adebayo was a menace on the defensive-end of the floor all night long protecting the rim and getting his hands on almost every ball that crossed the paint. In Game 1, the Heat picked apart the Celtics’ defense, getting almost every shot that they wanted in a 118-107 victory. At halftime, the Heat led by 15 points.

If not for two hideous quarters the Celtics could be up 3-0 on Miami. As Chris Forsberg writes in the wake of a crazy Game 3, the C's are running out of ...

Brown finished with 40 points on 14-of-20 shooting and his aggressiveness attacking the basket was a primary reason Boston surged close in the fourth quarter. The Heat were practically begging the Celtics to steal this game. There’s a case to be made that Boston is the most talented team remaining in the playoffs. Yet again, the Celtics have two choices. But there’s only so many times you can shoot yourself in the foot before you run out of toes. Once every four times down the court, the Celtics essentially handed the ball to Miami. The Heat didn’t even fully capitalize on those giveaways, though a 33-9 edge in points off turnovers is still a jarring difference. In nearly eight minutes of matchup time, Tatum did not score against Tucker. He missed the only two shots when defended by him and turned the ball over once, per NBA tracking. Ime Udoka, who has routinely pushed the right buttons since early January, made a curious decision to start Daniel Theis in place of ailing Robert Williams. After feasting on Theis in the 2020 bubble, Bam Adebayo’s eyes went wide seeing the German big man across the court in the first half. Instead, Boston has been impossibly bad in those two quarters and now this team's back is against the wall yet again. He was minus-17 in the frame. There is little margin for error for a team that has been prone to lapses in intensity. Take nothing away from the Miami Heat, who Al Horford succinctly described as a, "wounded animal,” given the desperate way they pounced on Boston in the opening quarter of Saturday’s Game 3.