The perfect way to wash away the sins of a shaky regular season is to get back to what they know best.
BOSTON -- You didn’t think this series would be a pleasant entertainment experience, did you? The Pacers are the grittiest bunch of grinders since the Grizzlies stalked the hardwood, and the Celtics don’t exactly do things the easy way either.
“This is not a series for the timid,” Boston coach Brad Stevens said and he was right on the money with that observation. Both teams shot under 40 percent in Boston’s 84-74 Game 1 victory, neither busted out from behind the arc, and outside of Kyrie Irving, it’s not like there’s a ton of individual offensive firepower on either side of the equation.
This is going to be slow, grind-em-up basketball where shotmaking, as opposed to shot creating, will be the order of the day. Indiana can win this way. It’s how the Pacers have won games all year and it’s really the only way they can compete at this level without their star guard, Victor Oladipo.
The Celtics, on the other hand, needed to win this way. Only a tough, physical series can wash away the sins of a regular season that was long on expectation and short on results.
The third quarter was the thing. Trailing by seven at the half, the C’s put the clampdown on Indiana’s offense and reverse engineered a first half that was very much to Indy’s liking. The numbers for the Pacers were brutal: 2-for-19 from the field, 0-for-8 from 3-point range, eight total points against 26 for the Celtics.
The Boston lead grew to as many as 22, and only a late flurry made it cosmetically close. In the end, it was a satisfying Celtic victory that may have harkened back to the bad old days of the 90s, but was brutally beautiful for a Boston team that needs to rediscover its grit.
“Maybe the best combination for our team,” Stevens said. “It was hard. It wasn’t pretty. Things didn’t always go our way. But you’ve got to stay together and grind it out.”
Here are more thoughts on a perfectly imperfect Game 1.
The game was won in the third quarter, but it changed in the second when Thaddeus Young picked up his third foul.
The foul came with about five minutes remaining in the second quarter and the Pacers enjoying a double-digit lead. Up to that point it had been all Indiana, and a familiar feeling of frustration was settling over the Garden.
As the Pacers took a 36-25 advantage, there were a smattering of boos. It wasn’t to the same level we saw in the 76ers’ Game 1 defeat to the Nets on Saturday, but it was building toward that kind of response.
And then Young picked up his third.
Irving quickly buried a 3-pointer and suddenly there was life again. The C’s played Indiana even after that and while a seven-point deficit at halftime isn’t ideal, it could have been a whole lot worse.
It’s no coincidence that the C’s third quarter run was aided by Young picking up his fourth foul early in the frame.
Darren Collison also got nicked for his fourth a few minutes later and things started to snowball. The C’s weren’t exactly running away with things, but the Pacers simply couldn’t score.
“I thought we lost our way in the third quarter,” Indiana coach Nate McMillan said.
The C’s meanwhile, became connected and organized on the defensive end. They were flying around the ball, causing havoc and contesting shots. This is the team we thought we were getting, the same one that ran to the conference finals last season on spirit and effort as much as talent.
Offense is for show, this series will be won on the defensive end. For the first time in a long time the C’s locked in and took care of business for 48 minutes.
Still, somebody had to score some points, and that someone was Marcus Morris.
There once was a time when Morris was the Celtics best player. It was early in the season when nothing was working, except for Mook, who was making a creditable All-Star argument. That didn’t last. His shooting percentages nosedived and those long pullup 2’s weren’t so clever anymore.
But Morris is a pro and he knows it’s not what you did last, but what you do next that matters. His hot first half shooting kept the Celtics afloat during a stretch when they couldn’t get anything to fall and looked like they were running their offense in quicksand.
Give the Pacers credit for much of that. Indiana’s defensive gameplan is predicated on turning teams over, and the C’s played right into their hands with careless turnovers. The Pacers can rightly say that if they hadn’t missed all those shots or bricked all those free throws – a ghastly 12-for-21 from the line – they would have walked out of the Garden with a win.
But they did and it was Morris who showed out big. If the C’s are going to do damage this postseason they’ll need all of their wings to have games like this at some point.
The troubling thing for Indiana...
Besides the final score and all those missed shots, the Pacers couldn’t take advantage of Marcus Smart’s absence due to injury. For a team that doesn’t have an obvious offensive focal point, their wings have to be able to make shots to open things up for their inside game.
Jaylen Brown drew the start, and his primary directive was negating Bojan Bogdanovic from going off. Credit Brown with a job well done, even when he couldn’t get anything going for himself on the offensive end.
Brown and friends rendered Bogdanovic nearly invisible, with a pedestrian 12 points on 4-for-11 shooting. For the Pacers to have any chance in this series, he’ll need to be much better. As will Tyreke Evans. The lone Pacer capable of getting to the basket continued his erratic season with a 3-for-11 performance.
They’ll be better in Game 2. If not, this will be a short series.
The Celtics are in no way better without Smart
But they are longer with Brown in the starting lineup next to Jayson Tatum on the wing. Throw in Al Horford and Aron Baynes up front and the C’s looked an awful lot like last year when they had size advantages at every position.
That 55-42 rebounding advantage was telling. During Indiana’s best quarter, the second, the Pacers feasted on the offensive glass. In all the others, they were one-and-done on the offensive end.
All those short possessions led to transition opportunities and that’s McMillan’s number one concern. With good reason. The Celtics had a 24-14 edge in fast break points.
Smart’s absence also caused all kinds of weird crossmatches
Primarily Wes Matthews guarding Kyrie Irving, and vice versa. Matthews length and tenacity caused Kyrie some problems in the first half, but Irving figured things out in the second half and finished with 20 points on 17 shots.
It wasn’t vintage Playoff Kyrie, but it got the job done. It’s not hard to see that in a series like this, having that one guy who can go and get it whenever he needs to is a mighty big advantage. Kyrie was the missing ingredient last season and if they can match this kind of defensive intensity with his flourishes then they really might have something.
“At this point it’s just moving on to the next thing,” Irving said. “When you have that kind of mentality you don’t need to be fixated on mistakes.”
That’s the mentality the Celtics need to have. It’s the one we all assumed they’d have. Having it now is all that matters.
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