Friday night reinforced what might be this team's Achilles' heel: They're not great front-runners.
"There’s nothing tactical about it: It’s just a matter of will. And they wanted it more tonight," Smart said when asked about the Hawks' rebounding advantage."They go every night. We’ve gotta be able to stop that. Like I said, they’re getting second-chance shots, they get to feeling good."
Unlike some of their regular-season duds, the Celtics held their own offensively, scoring 29 points in the final quarter to cut Atlanta's lead to one before the Hawks pulled away. From Smart's season-high 24 points to Grant Williams' 14 points off the bench in his series debut, there were plenty of encouraging signs offensively.
If the Celtics want to get back to the NBA Finals, however, they need to play championship-level defense -- the kind they played during the 2022 postseason, when they allowed just 102 points per game and stormed through the Eastern Conference with a chip on their shoulder., with last year's Finals loss serving as motivation to maintain their edge. Yet Boston briefly lost that edge Friday night as a clear front-runner to let the Hawks into the series.
If we know anything about this group, however, expect that chip to re-emerge in Game 4 on Sunday night.
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