The sports language of the USA is rich in flowery paraphrases and of course it also offers the right word for such an event. A so-called blowout struck the Miami Heat in the fourth game of the NBA playoff series against the Boston Celtics – they were simply blown out of the arena like a tornado. Even if the result of 82:102 reads reasonably friendly, what Miami coach Erik Spoelstra had to say after this beating is true: “They attacked us. But more than anything else, our offensive weakness at the beginning damaged us.”
The Heat slept through large parts of this crucial duel, which is after all about getting into the final. For the Celtics, the club of the German Daniel Theis (this time four points and three rebounds), on the other hand, the following applied: Basketball can be a simple game when the opponent staggers around like a hungover village team on a Mallorca trip at the beginning. Miami’s shots landed everywhere but in the basket. The Celtics quickly led 18-1, and the rest turned out to be a comfortable cruising excursion.
Boston owes the fact that it is now 2-2 in the best-of-seven series to a performance that was not necessarily to be expected. While the Celtics have struggled with the pace and intensity of the heat so far in the semifinals, this time they dominated the momentum at both ends of the field. And when that’s the case, a more leisurely, structured action usually develops, whereby Boston’s toilers can also get serious without frenzy.
Jayson Tatum is again the guarantor of the Boston Celtics in the NBA playoffs
A good portion of “urgency” was the key, said Celtics chief scorer Jayson Tatum, who after a gloomy performance in game three now contributed 31 points, eight rebounds and five assists. In fact, he and his team have put things straight after the duel had previously swayed in one direction or the other with acute rashes. Game four was not the first “blowout”, the Celtics had already won game two with a similar clearness. The ambitions for the NBA final are huge in Boston after a few narrowly missed attempts in previous years – the only problem is: there are always slacks between big victories.
Nevertheless, Tatum, one of the dominators of this playoff, drew confidence for the rest of the series from the renewed equalization. “We have wiped out the nick of our previous defeat. We were determined to play better,” said the match winner. His trainer Ime Udoka saw it similarly. “Today everyone gave it their all. We finally understood that it’s all about aggressiveness and physique.” This combination meant, for example, that no player in Miami’s starting lineup could score double digits.
So the mentality club Boston once again helped the right “mindset” – another term from US sports: the attitude to simply sweep the opponent out of the hall.