In front of their white-hot audience, the Boston Celtics had a great opportunity to return to the NBA Finals, 12 years after their last appearance, but Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat decided otherwise. The Heat dominated this Game 6 by leading almost from start to finish to win a Game 7. On the side of the Celtics there was necessarily the feeling of having missed a good chance.
“She’s hard to swallow. ” Said Derrick White
Like a feeling of having given the game to the Floridians by not playing diligent basketball and clearly lacking intensity at the start of the game when they announced that this game had to be treated as Game 7. They quickly put in a bad rhythm with 5 lost balls in the first quarter, which allowed Miami to take control.
“It’s kind of telling how our nights have been in this series when we’re not taking care of the ball,” said Ime Udoka about Boston’s slow start. “A lot of balls lost through inattention, unprovoked, which put us behind in the score. We had opportunities and we didn’t take advantage of them.
Boston did indeed have opportunities by taking the lead 4’43 from the end on a 3-point shot from Derrick White, but the money time was mismanaged as they took a scathing 17-6 to finish the game.
Above all, they never managed to slow down Jimmy Butler, author of a legendary performance with 47 points, 9 rebounds and 8 assists, succeeding in difficult shot after difficult shot, determining not to go on vacation.
“He was just hot,” said Jaylen Brown about Jimmy Butler. “He put in a lot of shots that you have to live with. He had 4 shots at 3-pts, I don’t think he had 4 in the rest of the playoffs. But tonight he was aggressive. He played with his back against the wall and he had an incredible game, we just had no answer against him tonight. We have to do a better job, and we will do a better job on Sunday. »
While Butler was making miseries at the green defense, neither Jaylen Brown nor Jayson Tatum failed to bring their own in the second half. If they register 20 and 30 points respectively, in the second half they combine 14 points by taking only 7 shots, including only 1 each in the last act. Way too little.
“I just think it was the flow of the game, the way the game was going,” Jayson Tatum said of the lack of shots in the second half. “Obviously I have to watch the video of the match, but I felt like I was attracting a lot of attention, I was trying to find mismatches. It’s just that the flow of the match was like that. »
Now we have to digest this defeat and everything will be decided on the side of the FTX Arena tomorrow evening, and this setback does not affect the confidence of the greens.
” On a scale of 1 to 10 ? Tatum asked with a smile when asked if he was confident? 10. I mean, it shouldn’t be less than that, right? You know, it’s the last game. That’s the important thing. It’s a 10 out of 10 for my confidence level and for the group. »
Against the Bucks they had been able to respond present in Game 7, but it was at home, this time the conditions will be very different.
“We won the deciding game against Milwaukee, and we won two games in Miami, so that’s the positive side,” said Ime Udoka. “We know we can go out there and win. But we have to make it harder for them, and sometimes it looks like we do, but we don’t take advantage of what’s in front of us, we play sloppy basketball on both sides of the court. This is not possible outside. »
Via ESPN