5 takeaways from Celtics’ season-saving Game 4 victory over Heat

Miami The Boston Celtics refused to wear No. 151 for one night.

Though it’s not a particularly catchy or magical rallying cry, don’t expect to see it plastered on t-shirts at every seat in TD Garden for Thursday’s Game 5 (8:30 ET, TNT). Still, the Celtics’ escape from becoming the latest NBA playoff sweep victim was preferable to anything else they had on Tuesday. As of right now, there are 150 teams in league history that have lost a best-of-seven series after falling behind 3-0.

The Celtics won 116–99 at Kaseya Center, and although nobody has ever returned, they still have a shot.

“Our goal is to return to Miami,” stated Jaylen Brown of Boston. “If that occurs,

Given its continued situation, Boston’s objectives have become more limited and its vision more focused. “Business Not Completed?” The goal of making it back to the NBA Finals and winning the title in 2022–2023 has been scaled back to, you know, winning one game at home in the Eastern Conference Finals.
However, as someone exclaimed a few years ago on the basketball court in Boston, anything is possible. Here are five things to remember from a game that, for a brief while longer, kept the Denver Nuggets’ playoff hopes alive.

Boston was facing a now-or-never situation, trailing 3-0 in the series and nine points at the beginning of the third quarter. After pushing them aside a few times in the first half, Miami appeared prepared to begin the game-winning celebration at 61-52.
At that point, the Celtics continued to play as Jayson Tatum made two 3-pointers and Derrick White made another after a timeout. They turned that nine-point deficit into a nine-point lead by scoring eighteen points in a row. They stiffened defensively, taking much of the fun and life out of the building and a little out of the Heat. They never trailed again after they moved the ball and, consequently, the needle.

They appeared, for the first time in this series, like the team that defeated the Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers to secure the East’s No. 2 seed and that loomed as the Finals favorites before suffering three straight meltdowns.

It was rumored that following their Monday film session, the Celtics had a team get-together at a nearby Top Golf. It was a more productive use of time than planning a summer getaway.

“Just getting together, talking it out,” Brown stated. “And a lot of times, you see locker rooms and teams start to go in the other direction when you get to this point down 3-0.” We want to confirm that we remained a unit. We intended to confirm that we