Ira Winderman: Game 4 notwithstanding, Celtics came to play this season, putting them on higher ground than Heat
The team with the best ability prioritized availability. So a lesson learned from the Boston Celtics by the Miami Heat and rest of the NBA, Friday night's seeming blip notwithstanding?
MIAMI — The team with the best ability prioritized availability. So a lesson learned by the NBA, Friday night’s seeming blip notwithstanding?
We’re about to find out whether that turns out not only to be a takeaway from the Finals but the regular season, as well.
For all the teams and players that downplayed and took off large swaths of the regular season, the ultimate reality remains a likely impending championship by a roster that played for real not only in May and June, but the preceding seven months, as well.
The Boston Celtics arguably did not exhale until perhaps Friday night, and still snuffed out the last breaths of the competition.
As a matter of perspective, Jayson Tatum played 74 of the 82 games during the regular season, Derrick White 73, Jaylen Brown 70, Jrue Holiday 69, and while Kristaps Porzingis played just 57, his backup, Al Horford, at 38, played 65. Taken further, prime reserves Payton Pritchard and Sam Hauser played 82 and 79, respectively.
It ultimately added up to being one more win from a championship.
Did those players have to play that many? Considering the Celtics ran away with the East by 14 games, assuredly not. And an injury late in the regular season assuredly would change the discourse, just as injuries robbed hope in the playoffs for Boston opponents Miami, Cleveland and Indiana.
But the Celtics largely showed up every night, built chemistry, developed consistency, saw it all before it all was there for the taking.
And played — from this parochial perspective — for six weeks after Miami Heat President Pat Riley questioned his team’s attendance.
With Riley words that resonate even more at this moment, as Boston returns home to seal an otherwise impressive playoff deal.
“There are a lot of elements that go into a culture, the erosion of a culture, problems in the NBA that are league-wide when it comes to health and players missing games, when it comes to availability,” Riley said last month in particularly measured words
“That’s a deep dive for us this summer, player availability.”
Yes, injuries happen. Yes, age should be factored. And, no, the 65-game rule for league awards hardly proved a panacea.
But an impending coronation of the Celtics would remain particularly meaningful.
The team that showed up the most often ultimately showed out, with Larry O’Brien, the ultimate attendance award, to be waiting in the wings Monday night at TD Garden.
And don’t offer the playoff fatigue excuse for other teams sitting so many so often. The Celtics also were in the NBA Finals in 2022, went to a Game 7 of last year’s Eastern Conference finals. So plenty of wear on Tatum, plenty on Brown.
So does Jimmy Butler look at Tatum and say he has to get out there more (or even at least as often as Horford who persevered, albeit in fewer minutes, at his age)?
Does Tyler Herro prioritize availability on a Brown or White or Holiday level?
Or do the Heat in the grander scheme see how youth endures and move away from often being a team of the ages, with last season’s biggest move being trading one 30-something (Kyle Lowry) for another (Terry Rozier)?
Often when a team wins a championship, the envious seek to emulate.
Sometimes you can’t, when there is only one Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Stephen Curry or even, last year, Nikola Jokic.
But getting players to play is far simpler than winning (quite figuratively) the lottery or hitting another sort of jackpot in the draft, a trade or free agency.
What the Celtics would accomplish with a still seemingly inevitable title is to show that if you come to play in October, December, January and the rest of the dog days, the hungriest of dogs can still have their day in the summer sun.
Yes, the Celtics’ depth of talent transcends. But ultimately, a 2024 NBA championship for Boston would be a victory for a team that came to play.
IN THE LANE
MOMENT IN TIME: Amid the Celtics’ push through the playoffs, Boston forward Jaylen Brown admits he continually finds himself returning to a single moment in time, namely last year’s Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Heat, a 103-84 home loss that included 8-of-23 shooting and eight turnovers by Brown, with the Celtics playing with a banged-up Jayson Tatum. “I mean, last year, just falling short on your home floor, it definitely hurt. It was embarrassing, in my opinion,” Brown said. “I felt like the team was relying on me. JT got hurt in Game 7 and I dropped the ball. To me, it was embarrassing. It drove me all summer, drove me crazy.” And to greater heights, as he awaits the Celtics’ needed fourth victory against the Mavericks. “It’s really just all mentality, mentally just your will, your focus, your perseverance, your ability to overcome self. I think that’s what I worked on the most,” Brown said. “In moments of embarrassment, in moments of coming up short, falling short is where the most growth takes place. Last year to end the season the way we did, I really attacked the summer.”
RIVALRY RESTS: Then there is Heat center Bam Adebayo having had to stand down at the start of the playoffs as Tatum thrived with the Celtics. Speaking on the Point Game Podcast that features former NBA guard and fellow Kentucky product John Wall, Adebayo said once the Heat are done with the Celtics there is no ill will toward his friend Tatum. “We’ve competed so much throughout the years,” Adebayo said. “Being in the same conference, at some point, we always end up seeing each other at the end of the year. I don’t know why it’s written like that. But a lot of times, we end up seeing each other at the end of the year. It’s one of those ones when I’m not talking to you throughout that whole series. As soon as the buzzer goes off and it’s win or lose, then it’s, ‘How’s the family?’ ‘How is everybody doing?’ ” Adebayo said. “At the end of the day, we’re out here to compete. I’m not here to be friends with you right now. In the summer, we can be boys. Cool, that’s my man, 100 grand. But when we get between those lines, I’m trying to rip your head off.”
TWO-WAY LIFE: Yes, there is a direct Heat connection (sort of) to the Celtics’ playoff run. Poached from the Heat’s G League roster in December, undrafted Southern Cal forward Drew Peterson finished the season on a two-way contract with Boston. That left him ineligible for the playoffs, but still in the traveling party. As Peterson told the Boston Globe, that also created a few awkward moments. With bench space limited, Boston’s two-way players find themselves watching from positions away from those in uniform, but also allowed to join the team during huddles. “When they start seeing me and JD (Davison) going back and forth from the bench, they’ll be like, ‘Whoa, who are these guys?’ ” said Peterson, who caught NBA attention with a solid summer league last July with the Heat. “In the first-round series against Miami, I caught a security guard giving us a side-eye when we walked onto the court.” The next Peterson sighting could be a Celtics champagne celebration,
MAKING THE ROUNDS: It was an eventful week for former Heat forward and current Heat assistant coach Caron Butler, including time in Dallas to commemorate the Mavericks’ 2011 NBA championship. A member of that roster, Butler missed the postseason that year with a knee injury. On the 13th anniversary of that title, Mavericks coach Jason Kidd, a member of that championship roster that defeated the Heat Big Three of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, said, “It was a surreal moment to be able to win the championship. To do it with that team, with Dirk (Nowitzki), being our leader, Jason Terry. Butler, drafted out of Connecticut by the Heat in the 2002 first round, then made an appearance on The GoJo and Golic radio show and spoke of Dan Hurley bypassing the Lakers’ coaching vacancy to remain at UConn and contend for a third consecutive national championship. “I wasn’t surprised. I know that it was a very intriguing offer to him,” said Butler, whose career included time with the Lakers. “I look at the momentum and everything that he’s been able to accomplish and build in Storrs. And I just think from a power standpoint, this is his baby and you don’t want to like leave in the middle or the midst of your greatness, of what you’ve been able to get that momentum going for.”
NUMBER
8. Lakers coaches since the Heat hired Erik Spoelstra ahead of the 2008-09 season. Amid losing out on Dan Hurley, who returned to UConn, the Lakers are in the midst of re-recruitment of JJ Redick, having, since the Heat’s hiring of Spoelstra, already gone through Phil Jackson (2005-11), Mike Brown (2011-12), Bernie Bickerstaff (2012), Mike D’Antoni (2012-14), Byron Scott (2014-16), Luke Walton (2016-19), Frank Vogel (2019-22) and Darvin Ham (2022-24).