The tone had softened from Sunday night, when Celtics Coach Doc Rivers accused Miami of “chippy” rather than sound physical play, but the Celtics continued to insist their own flaws — not the Heat and its high-intensity defense — proved their biggest enemy.
“Give them credit, I thought they did a nice job,” Rivers said. “But I thought it was a lot of us, too. . . . I didn’t think we handled a lot of things well. I thought we were pretty easy to guard last night.”
They scored just 36 first-half points, after all. They converted 42.7 percent of their field goals all told. They responded to Miami’s aggressiveness, they said, the wrong way: With blown fuses and technical fouls. Boston forward Paul Pierce got ejected. The Heat remained stoic. Miami fans hooted.
But the jury might be out on whether the Celtics tripped over their own feet, or were pushed to the ground by Miami, a team that’s grown up considerably this season. The Heat struggled in the season’s opening weeks as Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh, the team’s key summer free agent signees, played like total strangers. But Miami bears no resemblance to that fumbling squad, which opened with a 9-8 record. Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra said he puts no stock in Miami’s early-season play.
As James pointed out Sunday night, most observers focus on the Heat’s offensive weaponry — the jaw-dropping fast-break wizardry between him and Wade have that effect on people. Yet, he said, it is the team’s defense that has provided the biggest boost. And what Boston, which defeated Miami in the first round of last year’s playoffs, might have noticed in its last two meetings with the Heat is just how eerily similar the Heat looks — to the Celtics.
Miami has made its defense very much in Boston’s mold, only with far more speed and flair. And Sunday provided at least some evidence that Miami’s lightning-fast, highly aggressive version is flat-out better.
“It’s our defense,” James said Sunday, “that gets us where we need to be every night.
It is, Rivers said, a different brand than Boston’s. He put it this way: Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen would lose to the Heat’s stars in an Olympic Games. Celtics guard Rajon Rondo might be able to outrun anybody, but he suffered the game’s most embarrassing defensive stop Sunday, when James simply stripped the ball away from him on the dribble, heaving it the length of the court to Wade for a fast-break layup.
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