LeBron James takes his talents to South Beach rather than go it alone and try to beat his fellow superstars? Soft. Dwyane Wade defers to King James and lets him grab the reins of the new-look Heat? Soft. Chris Bosh is a wiry 6-foot-11 and can’t throw his weight around in the low post with the big boys? Soft, of course.
The Celtics proved their toughness in their first three meetings with the Heat this season, pushing them around both literally and figuratively en route to a 3-0 edge in the head-to-head series. But in the fourth and final meeting, on Sunday afternoon at American Airlines Arena, the C’s went about it entirely the wrong way.
Jermaine O’Neal, who played for a very different Heat team last season, tried to prove his toughness by delivering a hard foul to LeBron in the second quarter Sunday, and the two nearly came to blows when LeBron threw the ball at him in retaliation.
But let’s forget about the faux-toughness, with the posturing and the short-lived “fighting” and the double technical fouls. The Celtics needed to find the real kind of toughness against the Heat on Sunday — the kind that wins basketball games.
“Just mental toughness,” coach Doc Rivers said after the loss, an embarrassing 100-77 final. “Staying with what you’re doing. We came out, and I loved what we were doing. We kept the game simple. Then, all of a sudden, we went into that stretch where every play had to be brilliant. We were throwing lobs to J.O., cross-court passes that they intercepted, and I thought that just gave them life. You can’t give the Heat life.”
The Celtics got sloppy, playing the usual lazy, unfocused brand of basketball they annually play around this time of year. They turned the ball over constantly, they forced bad shots, and they made mistakes in execution that led to Miami fast breaks. That’s why, even though they made all of their first six shots and had early leads of 8-0 and 17-10, the C’s found themselves behind the 8-ball as early as the first quarter.
“You can’t turn the ball over against them, because that gives them transition,” Rivers said. “Wade was tough alone in transition last year. LeBron was tough alone in Cleveland. Now you put them together? You turn the ball over now, and you should just say, ‘Here, take the two points.'”
This game was built up for days ahead of time — national TV audience, superstars every which way, big-time playoff seeding implications. The Celtics were amped up for it, too — but they channeled their intensity in all the wrong ways.
Rather than go for the jugular trying to beat the Heat with sharp execution, they just got angry and rattled. The flagrant foul on O’Neal and the technical on Paul Pierce for his side-scuffle with Wade served as a turning point. The Celtics let things get personal, and they lost their focus on winning the game at hand.
The Celtics can get away with that now, but in the playoffs, there will be no more excuses.
All this talk of toughness needs to go by the wayside, and fast. If the C’s are truly tough, they’ll stop talking about it and show it.
