SUMMARY
- The Boston Celtics were trampled by the Miami Heat in Game 1 with a three-point shooting barrage.
- Jaylen Brown claims the Heat did a good job in restricting the Celtics from perimeter and paint scoring.
Jaylen Brown had a fairly good analysis of the Boston Celtics’ loss against the Miami Heat in Game 2. It was almost as if the Heat chose to use Boston’s tactics from Game 1 against them. The first-round series is currently tied at 1-1 with Miami headed over the Kaseya Center for Games 3 and 4.
Brown claimed that the Celtics needed to be physical without worrying about the calls that it could have possibly drawn. During the post-game press conference, he said, “They’re physical. They make it tough. It’s stuff like that, they wanna push catches out. Especially if the whistle is in their favor, they thrive themselves on trying to make everything tough. So we’ve just got to fight for our spacing.”
He added, “We’ve got to just be physical and look forward to it. Own our space, catch the ball with physicality. Don’t look for the ref to make the call and embrace it… And I don’t think we did. I think they embraced it a little bit more than we did tonight.” Unfortunately, the Celtics couldn’t score as much as they did in Game 1 from deep range going 12-33 from beyond the arc. Their biggest performer within the paint, Kristaps Porzingis only shot 1-9 from the field and scored 6 points in 30 minutes.
Joe Mazzula expected the Celtics to face adversity against the Heat
The Celtics predicted that the Heat would come out with a different mindset to overtake them in the series. Head Coach Joe Mazzulla claimed that facing adversity in the playoffs is inevitable. He said, “I’d say it’s just the nature of the playoffs, it is adverse itself. So to think that you’re not going to have ups and downs throughout a run, you’re not being realistic. You just have to go back and look at what we did well and what we didn’t. And figured out what there is that we can improve upon.”
Miami tactfully apprehended the Celtics’ perimeter shooting almost forced them to resort to mid-range attempts. The Heat out beat a franchise record the Celtics achieved in Game 1 shooting 22 three-pointers. Miami shot 23 three-pointers while making sure everybody had some sort of involvement on offense. Tyler Herro, who was expected to lead the offense made multiple unselfish plays to give Caleb Martin and Bam Adebayo easy buckets. He had 14 assists along with 24 points.
Shaquille O’Neal had a spot-on prediction for the Celtics vs Heat Game 2
Shaquille O’Neal a former Boston Celtics player predicted that the Heat would win against the Celtics by 10 points. Considering how Boston played throughout the year irrespective of the Heat’s playoff history against them, Shaq’s take was quite bold, to say the least. Interestingly, the Heat pulled off a 111-101 victory which made Shaq’s prediction come true.
Before the Heat-Celtics game, Shaq said Miami would win by 10.
Barkley said let’s bet on it.
Shaq doubled the bet at halftime.
Cut to Shaq with wads of hundreds.
This is why Inside the NBA = 🐐 pic.twitter.com/0FStkzuIix
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) April 25, 2024
Boston was favored to win by a large margin considering the Heat’s struggles with injuries. Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier were both ruled out for Game 2 and chances are they may not return any time soon either. However, it’s the teamwork that was on display during Game 2 that will help them widen their chances of winning more games during the series.