Channeling the famous Red Sox ‘Idiots’ of 2004, the Celtics started a long climb back with a win in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals.
On the morning of what could have been their last day at work, Boston’s Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown leaned into their city’s baseball history.
The Celtics entered Tuesday’s matchup in the Eastern Conference finals down three games to none against the Miami Heat. Since no team in NBA history has successfully climbed out of that kind of deficit, Smart and Brown sought inspiration from another sport. In 2004, the Boston Red Sox pulled off one of the greatest comebacks of all time, rallying from a 3-0 deficit in the American League Championship Series to beat the New York Yankees before going on to win the World Series. Back then, before Game 4, Kevin Millar famously proclaimed, “Don’t let us win today.”
On Tuesday morning before their Game 4, Brown and Smart went for the remix, adding their own spin to Millar’s quote. Brown replaced the “today” with “tonight.” Smart made sure to lock eyes with a reporter as he said, “Don’t let us get one.” The confidence, it would seem, never wavered.
That evening, the Boston Celtics appeared again. It was the same Celtics team that had played throughout the regular season with an identity and a defensive constitution. For the first time in this series, that team showed up, blustery as ever but backing up its big words with a 116-99 win.
“Big win. Big win. Anytime you get the win in the playoffs, it means a lot,” Brown said. “Definitely with our backs against the wall, we didn’t want to go out like that.”
The Celtics held off what would have been an embarrassing sweep, if an expected one, considering how poorly they had played through the previous three games. An hour and a half before the start of Game 4, the doors of Kaseya Center opened and confidence streamed in. As fans, mostly clad in white, walked the concourse, a spontaneous chant of “Let’s go Heat” would break through and catch on.
