What is there to even say?
I’m not sure I’m totally positive about what I just watched.
Well, that’s not true.
There’s bad, and then there was THAT.
We watched the Miami Heat look the Boston Celtics in the eye and laugh at them.
They took a somewhat soft Celtics punch early on the chin and laughed.
All series long they’ve been the tougher team.
They’ve been the ones who imposed their will and played with force.
There’s just no excuse for what we’ve seen.
The Celts had health.
They had the talent.
But you know what?
None of that shit matters when the talent refuses to show up.
The Heat may not have All NBA guys, but they have guys who came to play.
That in NO WAY happened in this game.
The thing is, they were not alone.
Compare that to a nice little 29 points on 11-14 (6-9) from Gabe Vincent.
Add in another 18 points on 7-11 (4-7) from Caleb Martin.
Defensively, this was as bad as an all around performance as we’ve seen all season.
They go 19-35 from three.
In the biggest game of the season, the Celts got beat by Mazzulla Ball.
The way MIA would drive and kick to open shooters is what this Celtics team used to do.
They finished with 56/54% splits and 19 3PM with 26 AST and only 8 TOs.
That’s winning basketball.
A cool 39/24% with 23 AST and 15 TOs.
How do you expect to win any sort of playoff game with that?
I’d call it embarrassing, but that doesn’t even do it nearly enough justice.
The way the Celtics played tonight, they deserved everything that happened.
It started early with them losing their mental composure.
They let calls and non calls impact their mindset and that bled into the defense.
From there, they were never able to recover.
Every single time the Celts kept shitting the bed.
Let’s tell it like it is.
From top to bottom, star players to role players to the coach.
It was a complete failure from everyone involved.
You put up this throw in of performance with everything on the line?
This is not a case of the Celts threw this game or this series away.
No, don’t get that twisted.
The Miami Heat completely owned them.
From Game 1 to Game 3, that is the reality.
The Heat have been the better team in every single way.
They deserve their 3-0 lead and then some.
NBA history suggests Tuesday’s Game 4 is all but a formality.
We know the history, no team has ever won a series down 0-3.
Once this season is over, there is no talking like this wasn’t a failure.
Of fucking course it was.
That is the very definition of failure.
We’ll dive deeper in the morning.
As painful as that will be.
