Celtics send defending champs home
In the fog of the Celtics’ Game 5 loss to Milwaukee that dropped his team into a 3-2 series hole, Boston coach Ime Udoka made a prediction.
“It’ll make it sweeter when we bounce back,” he said.
Two wins later, the Celtics turned their coach’s prophecy into reality.
Grant Williams scored a careerhigh 27 points and hit seven threepointers, Jayson Tatum added 23 and Boston set a Game 7 record with 22 threes to eliminate the NBA champion Bucks 109-81 on Sunday in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
The Celtics will face top-seeded Miami beginning Tuesday in a rematch of the 2020 East final. The Heat beat the Celtics in six games in that series at Walt Disney World.
Tatum said his team embraced the “backs against the wall” moments it faced in having to win the final two games after their late collapse in their previous home game.
“As much as it hurt to lose Game 5, I was looking forward to that challenge,” Tatum said. “I believe in myself, I believe in this team. I expected to play the way I did and for us to respond the way we did.”
The Celtics trailed early in Game 7 before outscoring the Bucks 61-38 in the second half to cruise to the victory. Boston used a whopping 54-point advantage from behind the arc to improve to 25-9 in decisive seventh games.
The Bucks are now 3-9. They went 4 for 33 (12.1 per cent) from the three-point line. That’s the secondworst percentage ever in a playoff game (minimum 30 attempts).
Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo had 25 points, 20 rebounds and nine assists. But he was just 3 of 11 in the paint in the second half, including 1 for 6 the fourth quarter.
“Shots that I usually make wasn’t going in. That’s basketball; that’s sports,” Antetokounmpo said. “Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. There’s a winner, there’s a loser. You’ve just got to live with it.”
Udoka said he’s mostly been able to maintain tunnel vision throughout his first season as a head coach, but said he allowed himself to take in the roar of the TD Garden crowd in the closing seconds.
He said being able to have Game 7 at home mattered. The Celtics won on the final day of the regular season to earn it for this matchup when the Bucks rested their regulars and were blown out 133-115 by Cleveland.
“This is what we played for, why we played the season out, to have home-court advantage in a Game 7,” Udoka said. “If you believe in the basketball gods, those things matter.”