BOSTON, United States — Desperate to reduce
turnovers and avoid third-quarter slumps, the
Boston Celtics hope coming home
will spark a revival in their NBA Finals performance.
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The Celtics and Golden State Warriors are deadlocked
1–1 in the best-of-seven championship series entering game three Wednesday at
Boston Garden.
After an epic fourth-quarter rally brought Boston a
game one triumph, the Warriors took advantage of 33 points off 19 turnovers and
a big third quarter for a 107–88 victory in game two on Sunday.
“Didn’t give ourselves a chance with a lot of those
turnovers,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka said. “We weren’t strong with the ball. For
us that was a little disappointing.”
The Celtics are 5–4 at home in the playoffs, while
going 8–3 on the road, but star
Jaylen Brown is ready to forget such things.
“We’ve got to come out and play our best version of
basketball,” Brown said. “We can’t let stuff that’s happened in the past affect
our mindset going forward.”
“We’ve just got to come out and do a better job
taking care of the basketball.”
The Celtics need to avoid falling into deep holes in
the third quarter as they have in the first two games in
San Francisco as well.
“We’ve got to come ready to play, come ready to meet
that physicality on both ends,” Brown said. “We’re not a perfect team, but
we’ll figure it out going forward. We’ve just got to play for 48 minutes.”
“We know the Warriors are a third-quarter team. We
talked about it. They still came out and were able to go on a run. We’ve just
got to be able to answer.”
Boston forward
Jayson Tatum stresses cutting down on
turnovers.
“They got a lot of points off our turnovers. That’s
something we’ve got to be better for next game,” he said. “Throughout the
playoffs, the games we have high turnovers result in a loss.
“That’s definitely a point of emphasis. We’re a
really good team when we take care of the ball. But we have those lapses where
— snowball effect — we pile on turnovers and dig ourselves into a hole.”
Tatum says the intensity of road games helps the
Celtics play better, but they will have that same urgency at home in the Garden
now.
“Just playing with a sense of urgency,” Tatum said.
“Human nature plays a part when you go on the road. It’s a tough environment.
“We’ve relaxed at home. (Now it’s) just having that
sense of urgency, knowing that we’re at home, but that we need to play better
at home.”
Derrick White said the Celtics were frustrated after
two poor third quarters against the Warriors.
“It’s definitely frustrating,” White said. “It’s
easy to talk about, but we’ve got to go out there and change something. We’ve
just got to learn from these mistakes that we made and grow from them.”
Going to be rocking
Celtics center
Al Horford vowed a better performance in game three.
“I felt like we
missed a lot of easy ones around the basket. I have to be better in that area
and I will be next game. I’ll look at the film. I’ll learn from it.”
When it comes to
turnovers, Horford says, “for us to be in a better chance of winning, we have
to cut those down.”
Horford says the
Celtics need a mental change to improve in the third quarter.
“It’s a mindset,”
he said. “It’s something we have to fix. Coach has talked about it. We need to
find ways to be better. Look at that film and be better, and I think we can.
“On to Game 3. I can’t
wait to get to the Garden. I know it’s going to be rocking on Wednesday.”
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