Since the start of the 2022 postseason, the C's are 18-7 on the road. At home though in the same span? 14-14.
If they can just do a little bit better at home, they can win it all. Blowing a handful of home games is not a good recipe in the postseason. To their credit, at least so far this postseason they've rebounded from bad Game 2 losses. Last round they took care of business in home Game 5. Now they need to take care of business tomorrow, can't be letting this series go longer. Make it easier for yourself and take advantage of HCA.
Bill Simmons had a good theory on this recently. He thought that the Celtics home crowd was so tuned to their bad late game tendencies that when things start getting tight or going wrong the entire crowd sort of tenses up which sort of feeds into a feedback loop where the Celtics tense up and the execution gets even worse. I don't know if I buy it necessarily but I've been to one or two home games where you can certainly feel a tense "sphincter tightening" in the crowd when things start going wrong.
I'm not sure about that. I think part of it is complacency and simply falling into a false security playing at home & taking this mindset that they'll simply roll. Then they come out of the gate and either the shots aren't falling early or the other team is hot and the Celtics can't seem to overcome it. A lot of that is mental and my largest concern with this team. We see this snowball effect where bad offense turns into bad defense and it just gets bad.
I was at Game 2. The crowd was electric early. Then the team starting bricking shots left & right which helped snowball into defensive lapses and the Cavs got hot on the offensive end. Then the crowd turned. But that was out of anger & frustration. Not tenseness. I don't think anyone was thinking about late game issues as this was transpiring.
If it's a close game late in the 4th, then yeah, the tenseness in the crowd comes. But that's not unique to Celtics fans.
Topic: Celtics 2024 Playoff Run Thread (Read 32209 times)