For Al Horford, the Celtics have lost their defensive DNA

In a meeting that they absolutely had to win to stay alive, the Celtics completely sank on the floor of the Heat (128-102). Miami was thus devilishly skillful throughout the game, with 57% success in shooting including 54% from 3-pointers, leaving no hope to his opponent. The credit goes of course to the men of Erik Spoelstra, but the shortcomings of the Boston defense are also logically for many.

Jayson Tatum’s teammates were the best defense in the league last season, and that’s why they went to two title wins. But since the start of the playoffs, they have made more and more defensive mistakes, with accumulating delays and increasingly disabling bad habits.

Like a Robert Williams weighed down by faults, trapped by feints as in his rookie season…

“Yeah, you know, we definitely let their runs hurt us early on, and we had some stupid ball losses that really hurt us” details Al Horford. “As far as the defense goes, for some reason we lost it, we didn’t do the best job possible”.

Miami’s aggressive defense also disrupted Boston’s offensive rhythm. Jayson Tatum (14 points) and Jaylen Brown (12 points) completely went through, combining 12/35 in shooting including an awful 1/14 from 3-pointers. A performance unworthy of two All-Stars, in a game of this importance, in the conference final.

Hope brings life…

However, Joe Mazzulla’s men had managed to reduce the gap to 12 points (61-49) at the start of the third quarter, to hope to overturn the match. Before totally exploding thereafter.

“Yes, yes, it was really difficult because I felt like at that moment our attack was hurting our defense” adds Al Horford on the Celtics’ aborted comeback. “We weren’t getting our shots and we weren’t able to come back in defence, and we have to understand that our DNA, our hard core as a team, is the defensive aspect. That’s who we are, and that’s something we need to get back to if we want to come back and be able to win this series.”.

In the level of play, the attitude, and the “body language”, Boston seems KO standing. Now down 3-0, the Celtics are on the precipice and thus of a terrible disillusion as they were favorites to win this series. Nevertheless, Al Horford refuses to lay down their arms and hopes to make the statistics lie.

“We’ve faced adversity all year and right now I personally think that going into the game we had the right mindset. Sometimes you want something so badly, and things don’t go the way you planned.” concludes the Celtics veteran. “But it was more difficult for us tonight, there’s no doubt about that. It’s part of our journey. And right now, we’re at rock bottom, and rightly so, we’re considered knocked out because we haven’t been able to respond. But we are not eliminated yet. We are down 3-0. I know what that means. I think I saw the other day, 0-149 (the record of the teams trailing 3-0 in the playoffs) or something like that. We are therefore not eliminated yet. We are still in the race. We are one of four teams still in the race..