Celtics

Celtics smack Heat in Game 5 blowout, advance to East semis: 9 takeaways

A rivalry with a ton of bad blood ultimately went the way of the No. 1 seeded Celtics, who finished the series in five games.

By Tom Westerholm

May 2, 2024

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The Celtics walloped the Heat on Wednesday, slamming the door on their first-round series with a 118-84 victory that started looking like a blowout as early as the first quarter. 

Here are the takeaways. 

1. Okay, so maybe everybody overreacted a little after Game 2. 

In fairness to any Celtics fans (or any members of the media) who may have gone into panic mode over a complete aberration of a shooting performance, the Heat rode a multi-week aberration into the Finals last year. There was no reason to believe last year’s Heat team could make enough 3-pointers to get past the Celtics. There was no reason to believe this year’s Heat team would shoot 53 percent from deep and make a franchise-record 23 triples in a single game. But both things happened, even though they defied reason and statistics. Sometimes, basketball is weird, and the Heat have a way of weirding basketball more than most teams. 

Fortunately for the Celtics, they have a better team – a team that doesn’t panic like those of us on the outside who saw Game 2 and flashed back to an absolutely unconscious Gabe Vincent bombing the Celtics into the offseason. 

“I think it’s all business. Just keep it professional,” Jaylen Brown said. “It is a lot of history, back-and-forth. But it didn’t matter who it was, we just had to get the job done.”

This is how the series should have gone. The Celtics were by far the better team (and they would have been even if Jimmy Butler had played). The 1-seed should blow out the 8-seed a few times, and it’s fine if the 1-seed gives up a single loss. 

In the end, a rivalry with a ton of bad blood and hurt feelings on both sides slid into the rearview without incident this time around.

2. The Celtics absolutely annihilated Tyler Herro on the defensive end. When Kevin Love played, they did it to him too. When the Heat tried to go zone to mitigate the damage, the Celtics annihilated the zone. 

“We’re not going to put this on the fact that we’ve had some injuries,” Erik Spoelstra said. “Let’s not take anything away from Boston. They’ve been the best team in basketball all season long, and in this series, in four of the games, they played as such. … I will not watch one minute of their games, but they will probably do this to several teams from here on out.”

The Heat didn’t do themselves any favors from the 3-point line either: They finished a cringeworthy 3-for-29 from behind the arc. The Celtics outscored them from deep by 39 points.

3. Brown did a lot of the damage against Herro, scoring 25 points on 11-for-19 shooting. He made just one of his seven 3-point attempts but shot 10-for-12 inside the arc. 

Two concerning elements of Brown’s game surfaced repeatedly throughout the series. First, he turned the ball over five times after finishing with six turnovers in Game 4. 

Second, Brown went 2-for-5 from the free-throw line. He’s shooting a bizarre 45 percent from the line so far in the postseason. 

“Last year, I probably had one of my worst series in the playoffs just in general and that has just carried on from there,” Brown said. “Facing them in the first round this year, I still feel like I could have played a lot better and a lot more relaxed. Maybe put a little bit more attention on myself than I needed to. But still, came out and was able to find ways to be aggressive and help my team win. Mahshallah is full circle. Now we’re just looking forward to the next.”

4. After scoring 38 points to lead the Celtics in Game 4, Derrick White continued his postseason rampage, scoring 25 points on 8-for-13 shooting to go with 5-for-10 shooting from 3-point range. 

“At the beginning of the series, they were defending us in different ways and we had to work to get him the ball,” Joe Mazzulla said. “Once they kind of made some adjustments, he can play pick-and-roll, he can play spot-ups, but he impacts the game in a lot of different ways, offense and defense, whether it’s rebounding, whatever it takes.”

5. The Celtics played their first game without Kristaps Porzingis, who will miss “several” games, and will be evaluated after a week, according to Mazzulla. But Al Horford filled in capably as the starting center, and Luke Kornet was +21 in 18 minutes. 

“Credit to Luke, not playing at the beginning of the series because of injury, and coming back, he gave us great minutes,” Mazzulla said. “It’s important that [the bench] continues to do that for us, and every series takes on a life of its own, so there will be different matchups, different sub patterns, but their open-mindedness and their ability to play regardless of the circumstances is important.”

Brown said he doesn’t feel like he and Tatum need to do more with Porzingis out, other than be themselves. 

“Knowing KP, he wants to be out there bad,” Brown said. “You can tell just knowing him now, he’s smiling, but you can tell it hurts him that he’s not being with his team. But I just told him that we’re going to hold it down. Just get your recovery in, get back healthy and we’re not going to miss a beat when you come back. So we’ll be ready.”

6. Once again, Jayson Tatum’s counting stats won’t blow anyone away (16 points, 12 rebounds, three assists), but he was essential to the Celtics’ offense – the Heat panicked whenever he had the ball, and he punished them when they didn’t panic. He finished a team-high +35 and showed how crucial he has been this season even though he didn’t average 30 points per game.

“That’s how it should be,” Tatum said, when asked about the team’s professionalism. “We should be learning from our mistakes and learning from things that we could have done better and applying it to the next season, which we are doing this year, because we are trying to have a different outcome than we’ve had in the past.”

7. Tatum offered up an interesting answer when he was asked about matching the Heat’s physicality, noting that he feels like the Celtics’ reputation as a team that can be out-toughed is overstated.

“I think the world we live in is it’s got to be something wrong with every team,” he said. “That’s what they like to say. And you can see how talented we are. I think it’s lazy, or easy to say that teams can out-tough us, right? And I never understood that. Like, what’s the definition of tough? Like, having the louder guys on your team? That s— don’t make you tough. Everybody has their own definition of what toughness is. It’s playing the right way, showing up every day to do your job without complaining. I think that’s being tough.”

8. The Celtics will now face either the Cavaliers or the Magic. Cleveland leads that series 3-2. Game 6 will take place on Friday. 

White’s scouting report?

“Um,” he said. “They’re both good.”

9. And finally, a final and deeply grateful goodbye to Mike Gorman, who officially announced his last game. Gorman gave us a number of fun little moments in his finale, including one last “Got it!”, and a subtly funny dig at Herro. In the end, the Celtics offered fans one more chance for a standing ovation, which they took enthusiastically. 

As Gorman signed off for the last time, his voice shook only once. 

“Special thanks to all who welcomed Tommy, Scal and me into your homes all winter long when there’s a cold night going on outside, you turned us on, and it just couldn’t have been better,” he said. “There’s no place I would rather have been. 

“So Boston, thank you. Good night.”