BOSTON — When the Boston Celtics lost Game 3 against the Orlando Magic in the first round, physicality took center stage. Cole Anthony’s yank-down of Jaylen Brown. The Magic pushing and shoving their way into the paint for offensive rebounds. Joe Mazzulla didn’t care. His eyes were elsewhere. “You just can't be blinded by the details…You have to fight like hell to win those [the margins],” he told reporters the next day.
In Games 4 and 5, the Celtics cleaned things up. The 21 turnovers, 15 offensive rebounds they allowed, and 26 conceded free throws were all left in the dust. Boston took care of the ball, held the Magic to one shot per possession, and defended without fouling.
Those are the three elements that control Boston’s pathway to another championship.
Now, the Celtics are staring down the barrel of a second-round against the New York Knicks. Two offensive spartans in Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns, and three elite defensive wings in Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby, and Josh Hart. But what does Mazzulla care about most?
“It will come down to the margins,” Mazzulla said on Friday afternoon, ahead of the Knicks series. “You have to be able to defend without fouling, rebound, take care of the ball, execute, and be able to get to different stuff defensively because of their ability to put pressure on the rim and get great shots.”
One question into his press conference—asked about the challenges of facing New York—Mazzulla defaulted to the same three principles he emphasized against Orlando.
The Celtics won all four regular-season matchups against the Knicks. One was an overtime thriller, another saw Boston pull away at the end, but the first two contests were blowouts. Threes and perfectly executed game-planning took New York out of its rhythm.
None of that matters anymore.
“You have to rebound, you have to take care of the basketball, you have to defend without fouling,” Mazzulla said when asked how the Celtics combat the praise of having dominated the regular-season matchups. “Those things, they don't go hand-in-hand. At the end of day, we have to go out there and execute on both ends of the floor.”
Facing the Knicks is irrelevant to the Celtics’ process
The Celtics have lofty goals ahead of them. The banners hanging in TD Garden don’t say ‘Second Round Winners’ or ‘Eastern Conference Champions.’ They say ‘NBA Champions.’
A certain comfort level comes with facing a team they dominated in the regular season. New York looked a level below Boston all year long. That’s irrelevant now.
“To me, the series is at 0-0, and it comes down to executing simple details over and over again with a high level of physicality and attention to detail,” Mazzulla said. “And you just have to be able to do that. And at the same time, have no expectations. I mean, it's the playoffs. It's two teams fighting for something.”
It’s easy to get caught up in the past, circling what went right with a red pen and trying to replicate that success. But those expectations are what get in the way of success.
“There's no one way that a series is supposed to go, as you've seen over the course of history, and as you've seen the playoffs now,” Mazzulla said. “At the end of the day, have no expectations about how it's going to go, be ready to get the environment what it needs, and do whatever it takes to win for however long it takes to win.”
If the Celtics want to hang another ‘NBA Champions’ banner next to last year’s, they need to hang the other two first. Just because no one is paid to put thread through silk for a second-round victory doesn’t mean the banner is any less important.
One cannot happen without the other.
Why the Knicks (and Magic) don’t matter to the Celtics
Defending without fouling. Rebounding. Taking care of the basketball. Why are those the three factors? Why, above all else, are those the aspects of the game Mazzulla and the Celtics care about?
More important than matchups. More important than anything the Magic, Knicks, or any other team could possibly throw at them.
Because everything else is already in place.
“Those are some of the, I think, the most important factors for us,” said Brown. “We're very talented, very skilled, we have a lot of shot-makers, we're gonna score the ball. Defensively, we got a lot of great defenders. The stuff that will get us in trouble? If we turn the ball over, we don't rebound, and things like that. So, taking care of that gives us a higher percentage of winning games. So, we emphasize those things.”
As the playoffs drudge on, bumps and bruises included, those are the controllables. Of course, the Celtics want to limit Brunson’s free throws. They want to keep Towns from draining threes all game. But at the end of the day, their internal goals set the baseline for everything they can possibly achieve, now, and throughout the postseason.
“We have all the talent. We have a lot of tricks we can pull out of our sleeves when we need to. But we want to build this run on a strong foundation,” Kristaps Porzingis said.
“We don’t want it to be, ‘Oh, we pulled this one out somehow, some way based off of JB or JT’s talent. They made some crazy plays and we just closed our eyes and hope it happens again.’ We want to have a good base as a team and do all of the foundational things correctly, and then have that in our back pocket if we need.”
Orlando’s physicality, Brunson’s free-throw grifting, and New York’s slew of athletic wings aside, the Celtics control their own destiny. “If you put yourself in a position to where you don’t impact the margins at a high level, players of his caliber who can get to his spot, can get to the free-throw line, put you in a tough spot,” Mazzulla said of Brunson.
In Game 4, the Magic were just as physical. The same goes for Game 5. The Celtics were still sent crashing to the ground when they beat Orlando off the dribble. ‘No easy buckets’ was still in full effect. Boston just did a better job of worrying about itself.
Every team will present its own challenges. New defense, offensive juggernauts, and everything in between. But Boston has the talent and mental willpower to keep their eyes internal, and that could be the difference between Banner 19 and an early vacation.
And the most important part? The opponent has no impact on this game plan.
This version of the Celtics has perfected the craft
Not every organization follows these same laws. The same code to live and die by. “Each team has [its] own identity,” Porzingis said, asked about his past playoff experiences as well. “Things they want to do and how they see winning. So, for everybody, it’s different.”
Internal focus embodies this Celtics group.
“But for us, it’s this,” Porzingis continued. “And it worked last year for us, and so far, we’ve been doing decently. And those are just the simple things that we need to do right to be a great team. And that’s also a little bit of [a] small insight [into] Joe’s mindset and what he expects from us. And that’s it. We have to do the small things, the simple things right, and we’ll be in pretty good shape.”
Capped with a title at the end of last season, the Celtics have carefully crafted a culture of containment. Exterior factors can change at any point in time, and reactions are crucial. But the volatility of said changes can always be regulated by taking care of what they can control.
And according to Brown, the Celtics’ longest-tenured member in the midst of the eighth playoff run of his career, this team is better at that than any other he’s been a part of.
“Last two years, I think we took care of the ball very well. I think we rebounded the ball really well this year with different groups. So, I think, in terms of intangibles, yeah, this is probably the best group in terms of that,” Brown said.
“And then on top of that, our shot-making, our defensive versatility, is a tough matchup for teams. So, we got a special group, and these are the most important times of the year, so we just got to come out and perform. That’s it.”