Did the Celtics find out how to defeat the Heat and create NBA history?

The Boston Celtics defeated the Miami Heat 66-43 in the second half to win 116-99 with their season on the line. The Celtics still need to win three games in a row despite their victory if they want to make it to the NBA Finals for the second time in as many seasons.

What can we thus take away from Boston’s triumph in Game 4? To put it another way, did the Celtics figure out how to overcome a 3-0 hole and create NBA history?

Everything Centers on Tatum
Although the playoffs haven’t started out this way, most people thought that Jayson Tatum was the superior player over Jimmy Butler during the regular season, which is why he received more votes for MVP.

The Celtics were the superior team (on paper) going into this game, thus Tatum didn’t need to perform like the best player in the series to win for his team. But Tatum has to play up to his hype, especially with Boston behind 3-0.

Following a few early blunders, Tatum delivered just that in Game 4, finishing with 33 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists, two blocks, and a steal in 42 minutes of play on 72.1 percent true shooting with a plus-minus of +21.

The improvements he made to the Heat’s ferocious defense are perhaps more remarkable than his basic counting metrics. Miami attempted to take advantage of Tatum’s rather loose handle (51st percentile in TOV% for his position, according to Cleaning the Glass) in Games 1 through 3 by aggressively gaping his driving lanes in an attempt to pry the ball loose.

Tatum averaged four turnovers in the first three games, demonstrating how effective this technique was. He only had one in the second half of Game 4 after making a few early mistakes, but he had five in the first. In order to avoid being disrupted by off-ball defenders, Tatum countered their aggressive approach by starting his dribble sooner in his assault. He would then either flow or erupt at the rim.

In an effort to accelerate his thought process, the Heat have also begun assigning two defenders to him during pick-and-rolls (a move they refer to as “trapping” or “hedging” the ballscreen). In the first three rounds, this strategy worked really well. However, in the fourth game, Tatum managed to mentally slow things down and make the appropriate choices based on how the battlefield was set up.

Tatum becomes the greatest player in the series and improves Boston’s chances of running the gauntlet if he can maintain the composure and control he showed in Game 4.

An Energy and Mud Battle
Please bear with me as I probably sound like a scene from “Avatar: The Last Airbender” in this paragraph. When the ball is constantly being driven and kicked until it results in a basket, free throws, or a catch-and-shoot three-pointer, the Celtics are at their finest. In other words, when they have a lot of “energy” in the basketball, they perform at their best.

Conversely, Miami’s defense relies heavily on forceful, turnover-causing plays that aim to either stall the possession (by forcing a theft) or end it (by discouraging opponents from throwing the ball). Their defense’s objective is to trap attacks in the “mud.”

In this tweet, Steve Jones Jr., a former NBA assistant coach and current co-host of The Dunker Spot, does a fantastic job of describing this battle:

Offer a Taste of Homegrown Medicine to Miami
What’s a decent strategy to avoid getting stuck in the mud? Remaining inside! Furthermore, remaining inside is comparable to racing outside during a shift in this ongoing metaphor involving mud and energy. After all, if you work so quickly that the defense never has a chance to adjust, you never have to deal with a team’s set defense.

And using your defense to spark your offense is the greatest method to continually go out and run. Naturally, this calls for creating turnovers.

Miami has dominated this metric through three games, forcing Boston to commit three more turnovers per game on average than they have. Given that Miami ranked second in the regular season in opponent turnover percentage (TOV%), this shouldn’t be that shocking. Their defense’s signature tactic is forcing turnovers.

But Boston turned the tables on Miami in Game 4, forcing them into five more turnovers than they coughed up. You guessed it—a plethora of transition opportunities resulted from these turnovers.

Now, Boston was just 26th in opponent TOV%, so even if the Heat were second, this sort of advantage might not seem sustainable. However, the Celtics placed 11th in this identical area the previous season while having eerily comparable players. This implies that when they are concentrated and tuned in, they can convert this kind of defense into offensive gear.

At Last, the Basketball Gods at Boston are Grinning
Many people’s primary takeaway from this game was that the Celtics shot far better from three-point range (40% on 45 tries) than the Heat (25% on 32 attempts), and their victory in Game 4 was largely attributed to this difference in shooting.

That is accurate, but the tale goes a little farther than that. Boston was severely outmatched in terms of three-point shooting through the first three games, as the Heat were shooting 47.8% from beyond the arc while they were only shooting 29.2%. The fact that the Celtics hit 37.7% from three during the regular season—good for sixth in the NBA—makes this particularly surprising.

Some may attribute this to Boston’s poor execution in the heat of the moment and Miami’s defense (ha, get it?). On the other hand, Boston shot just 32.6% on their 14.2 wide-open shots per game during their difficult period (NBA.com). Generally speaking, wide-open three-point percentages can vary greatly in small samples and are not particularly related to.

With this in mind, in Game 4, Boston shot 47.4% on their 19 wide-open three-point attempts. This is much more in line with their regular season average of 41.2% (4th in the NBA). So, hopefully, this indicates that their stretch of bad luck has subsided and that their outside shooting percentages are regressing back to the mean.

In the end, the Celtics are going to need this return to normalcy, along with continued great ball movement, defensive intensity, and Tatum brilliance (and some good ole’ fashion Irish luck), if they plan on being the first team in NBA history to come back from a 3-0 deficit.