ATLANTA — The Celtics didn’t must be again right here. All they needed to do was go for the kill.
Midway by the fourth quarter of Game, the C’s had been in full management. Up 13 with 6:10 remaining. Leading by 12 with 5:24 to go. But after asserting themselves for 42-plus minutes, they relaxed. They received complacent and passive. They failed to shut out the Hawks, who led by Trae Young pulled off a miraculous comeback to power a Game 6.
“We played not to lose instead of just playing to win the game,” Marcus Smart admitted Thursday morning at Celtics shootaround. “And that happens. Unfortunately it happened to us and we just made things a little bit harder for ourselves. We’ve got another great opportunity to be here. God has blessed us to wake up today and come out and try to bring it home.”
Even after blowing the lead, the Celtics discovered themselves ready to outlive within the ultimate seconds of Game 5. But two performs proved to make the distinction.
The C’s led 115-114 with 25 seconds to go after they gained a soar ball and Jayson Tatum discovered Robert Williams for an alley-oop. But moments later, Smart took an enormous threat. He knocked the ball unfastened from Young, and crashed to the ground in an effort to seize the unfastened ball. But he went by Young’s again and was referred to as for the foul, a lot to Smart’s disagreement.
“It’s calculated. I tipped the ball, loose ball, we dove to the floor,” Smart mentioned. “I received referred to as for a foul. I imply, I don’t know what else to do about that. I dive on the ground each single time, each recreation, it doesn’t matter. And that’s a unfastened ball, it’s not like he had the ball in his fingers. It was a unfastened ball and we each went after it. I don’t see how I received referred to as for the foul, but it surely occurs.
“You just move on. It’s not going to change the way that I play. I guarantee if it falls on the ground again, I’m going to dive my ass on the floor again. It is what it is.”
The Celtics had one other likelihood. They retook the lead after Derrick White was fouled with 6.5 seconds left and made each free throws to make it 117-116. Then the Hawks referred to as timeout to advance the ball to midcourt, and Young obtained the inbounds within the backcourt. With Jaylen Brown defending him, Smart creeped as much as provide assist for a possible double workforce. But he didn’t get there earlier than Young pulled up from 30 toes and drilled the game-winning 3-pointer.
The Hawks had been solely trailing by one, so that they didn’t want a 3-pointer, however Smart mentioned Young was most likely going to take that shot anyway.
“We’ve been doing really good all series in taking that shot away,” Smart mentioned. “So, even with me coming, even if I didn’t come, he’s probably going to take that shot. Even if I came harder, he was still going to take that shot. I wasn’t the defender on him, so the primary defender at times has to know that we have to be pressed up and continue to make it tough. He loves that shot and he walked right into it and he was comfortable. We can’t let him be comfortable.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com