Boston shows it’s at home on the road
After his team completed its stunning comeback Thursday night — the avalanche of 3-point shots, the 17-0 fourthquarter run, the silencing of Chase Center — Boston head coach Ime Udoka matter-of-factly offered worrisome words for the Golden State Warriors.
“It’s a confidence builder,” Udoka said, “because we didn’t play our best at all.”
He’s not wrong, either. Jayson Tatum shot 3for-17 from the field. The Celtics permitted Stephen Curry to spring free for 21 first-quarter points. And yet when Game 1 ended, Boston walked away with a rare, precious prize: a playoff victory in San Francisco.
That counts as a landmark in some ways, because the Warriors were 9-0 at home this postseason before Thursday night’s 120-108 loss. But the Celtics clearly are not rattled by any venue, not after pocketing road playoff wins in Brooklyn, Milwaukee and Miami.
So why not San Francisco?
Boston stands 8-2 on the road in this year’s playoffs, akin to laughing in the face of basketball tradition. Teams seldom prosper like this away from home in the postseason, much less erase a 15-point deficit to conquer a team that had won three NBA titles in the previous seven seasons in its grand return to the Finals.
But that’s exactly what happened Thursday night. Then the Celtics punctuated their triumph by strolling into the interview room and treating the achievement with striking nonchalance.
Their message, somehow delivered without a trace of arrogance: This is who they are. This is what they do.
“The road is the time when it’s just us,” guard Derrick White said. “We come together as a group. We enjoy playing on the road. It’s a tough place to play.”
White, a trade-deadline acquisition from San Antonio in February, went 5-for-8 beyond the arc in scoring 21 points off the bench. The Celtics made 21 shots in all from long distance, a tidy way to overcome Tatum’s terrible shooting night.
For all the pre-series chatter about the Warriors having more depth — how Steve Kerr could stretch his rotation to 10 or 11 players if needed — Boston received contributions from many players. Old man Al Horford, making his long-awaited Finals debut, scored 26 points (with six 3s). Cal alum Jaylen Brown added 24 and pumped life into his team early in the fourth quarter.
Or consider Tatum, a first-team All-NBA selection and Boston’s logical answer to Curry. Tatum scored only 12 points and had the worst shooting night of his 69 career playoff games. He didn’t score at all in the fourth quarter, when the Celtics still dropped 40 points on the bewildered Warriors.
Tatum, as Curry routinely does, shaped the game in other ways. He collected 13 assists, feeding his teammates rather than forcing shots in traffic.
For this, he credited Udoka, the longtime NBA assistant in his first season leading the league’s most storied franchise. He prioritized finding ways for Tatum to expand his game, to help the Celtics win when his shot isn’t falling.
“His message from Day 1 was a challenge to improve other areas of my game, and obviously playmaking was one,” Tatum said. “He’s done a great job of challenging me and the group. … I had a bad shooting night, but I tried to impact the game in other ways.”
It also helps to have the league’s top defense. The Warriors punctured that aura in the first three quarters, scoring 92 points. But the Celtics started switching on screens more aggressively in the fourth quarter, one reason they held Golden State to 16 points.
Boston became only the third team since 1958 to win an NBA Finals game after trailing by 12-plus points after three quarters. This was the first time in Finals history, according to Sportradar, that a team trailed by 10 or more after three quarters and won by 10 or more.
In many ways, the Celtics beat the Warriors at their own game. Boston spread the floor, made crisp passes and buried its opponent from beyond the 3-point arc. Only the protagonists were Horford, White and Marcus Smart, not Curry, Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins.
Some context here: The Celtics were eighth in the NBA this season in 3pointers per game (13.2) and 13th in the league in 3-point percentage (35.6). So they were good, not great, over the 82-game marathon.
Then, in the opener of the Finals, they were mind-blowingly accurate. The Celtics went 21-for-41 (51%), many of them on open looks.
“It was the way we were moving the ball on offense,” Horford said.
“The guys kept finding me, time after time. Derrick White also hit some tough shots. Get the looks, knock ’em down and that’s that.”
The Warriors only hope Boston doesn’t make it look so simple again in Game 2.