Jaylen Brown and the Boston Celtics are currently in the process of gearing up for Game 2 of their first round playoff series vs the Miami Heat, which is slated to take place on Wednesday evening from the TD Garden in Boston. The Celtics got off to a great start to the series on Sunday afternoon, blowing out the Heat by twenty points in a game that was never within single digits in the second half, and although Brown didn’t necessarily stuff the stat sheet, the fact that Boston was still able to win convincingly was a testament to the immense depth that Brad Stevens and company have assembled on the roster in 2023-24.
Still, if anyone knows that the Heat don’t go down easily, it’s the Celtics, who are matched up with their friends from South Beach for the third straight postseason.
Brown himself is expecting a tough and resilient Heat squad to show up in full force on Wednesday evening for Game 2.
“They’re going to be hungry. Desperate,” said Brown, per Noa Dalzell of CelticsBlog on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. ‘They’re going to come out fast, even more aggressive… knocking us to the ground just trying to win that physical match any way they can.”
“But, we’ll be ready to do the same thing.”
Of course, the Heat are operating at far from full strength, as the team is without the services of its best player in Jimmy Butler, as well as trade deadline acquisition point guard Terry Rozier and versatile wing slasher Josh Richardson, each of whom are dealing with various injuries.
Still, that shouldn’t stop the Celtics from wanting to step on the gas in full force this series.
A storied rivalry
Dating back to Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals a season ago, the Celtics have now won seven out of their last eight matchups against the Heat, including 4-0 this season after Sunday’s victory.
Of course, that one loss was a pretty big one, as in, Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals with a trip to the NBA Finals on the line big. Boston fell flat on their faces in that one, as the momentum was sucked out of TD Garden just seconds into the game when superstar Jayson Tatum rolled his ankle.
However, the acquisitions and trades that the Celtics made this past offseason showed up in full force on Sunday afternoon in Game 1, particularly Kristaps Porzingis, who looked like the best player on the floor for large stretches of the afternoon, providing a degree of versatility and unpredictability to a Celtics offense that went stagnant far too often last postseason.
Of course, this is still only Game 1, and fans will remember the 30-point halftime lead that the Celtics got out to vs the Atlanta Hawks in the first game of the playoffs last year before ultimately having that series extend to six games when it probably should have been over in four.
The point being, Boston will continue to have to prove that it is not the same old Celtics as this postseason progresses.
More must-reads: