It was fun there for a while for Celtics fans Saturday night, what with the Green rallying from a 26-point first-half deficit against the Miami Heat to make it a one-point deficit in the fourth quarter.
And to see not one but two injured Celtics disappear into the locker room to get looked at by the medics, then see both of them, first Marcus Smart and then Jayson Tatum, heroically reappear out of the tunnel, those were surely magical, scrapbook moments.
Except … no. Very little that took place at TD Garden on Saturday night will be remembered by Celtics fans. If Boston’s 109-103 loss to the Heat in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals is remembered at all, it’ll be brought up as a cautionary tale, as an example of how things can go horribly wrong when the players on your team allow themselves to take a bow for all the cheers they’re receiving before they’ve done anything to deserve those cheers. The Celtics are now down 2-1 in the best-of-seven series.
“We started out flat, seems like we were looking around too much instead of playing the game,” Jaylen Brown said. “And they got it going. They got stops and made shots and we didn’t in the first half. We didn’t match their intensity out of the gate.”
The Heat got it going, all right. They had a 39-18 lead after the first quarter and led by as many as 26 points in the second quarter, turning the normally festive, raucous Garden into a tomb. The place got relit when the Celtics chipped away at Miami’s bloated lead, and everyone was rocking and rolling when a Brown jumper cut the lead to 93-92 with 2:40 left.
But then it was the first quarter all over again. Max Strus hit on a 3-pointer. The Celtics turned the ball over. Bam Adebayo hit on a 17-foot jumper. The Celtics turned the ball over. What was also over at that point was the game, save for the fouls and the free throws.
“You just gotta (Miami) credit,” Al Horford said. “They were like a wounded animal. They came out fighting and for whatever reason we just didn’t have that same sense of urgency.”
Umm, OK. But Horford also said this: “I think coming back home, you tend to relax a little bit, and I feel like we did that at the beginning.”
Coming home … you tend to, what’s that again, relax a little bit?
In the Eastern Conference finals?
That, right there, is why the Celtics need to bury this game as quickly as possible. Although it must have been hugely entertaining for Boston fans to watch the Celtics storm back, inch by inch, basket by basket, there’s some fine print in the Comeback Manual that covers these kinds of games: Your accomplishment means nothing if you don’t win.
You want to talk about some real Boston sports comebacks?
How about the Patriots coming back from a 28-3 deficit against the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI?
How about Bernie Carbo hitting a pinch-hit, three-run homer in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series to turn a 6-3 deficit into a 6-6 tie?
How about the 2012-13 Bruins storming back with three third-period goals to send Game 7 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinal series against the Toronto Maple Leafs into overtime?
You know what those games have in common? James White made a 2-yard touchdown run and the Patriots won. Carlton Fisk hit a home run off the left-field foul pole leading off the 12th inning and the Red Sox won. Patrice Bergeron scored in sudden-death OT and the Bruins won.
All the Celtics did Saturday night was sandwich a midgame spurt between a horrible start and a horrible finish. Even the returns of Marcus Smart and Jayson Tatum, exciting at the time, especially when Smart hit on a 3-pointer, seemed not so special when the game was over.
“(Smart) obviously came back and played,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka ho-hummed. “Looked like he rolled an ankle, and Jayson got a stinger but they were able to continue and finish the game, so I’m assuming they’ll be OK.”
So there.
Then again, assume nothing about the Celtics. Recent history says they’ll bounce back and win Game 4 Monday night, given that they’ve lost two games in a row only twice since mid-January. But they were 2-2 at home against the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference semifinals, and now they’re 0-1 at home in this series against the Heat.
Game 2 could have been one of the biggest Celtics playoff victories ever. James White, Patrice Bergeron and Pudge Fisk would have been so proud.
Instead, this one needs to be forgotten. It doesn’t meet the rulebook definition of a comeback. But if you want to talk stunning, calamitous playoff losses, Game 3 against Miami qualifies.
(Photo of Marcus Smart falling while defending the Heat’s
