BOSTON (AP) — The Boston Celtics have been great on hardwood, and they don’t seem to be pressing the home court advantage during these playoffs.
A franchise that once went 40-1 at home over an entire season dropped to . 500 at TD Garden in the playoffs this year with a 123-116 loss to the Miami Heat Wednesday night in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why,” said Celtics star Jason Tatum, who scored 30 points. “You still have to play the game. You still get to play, no matter if you’re home or away. The playing field is the same: there is one ball, three referees, and two baskets.
“I don’t have an exact answer for why we’re home at .500,” he said. “But we have to be better.”
With the loss, the second-seeded Celtics squandered the court advantage they had by finishing 13 games ahead of Miami in the regular season. Not that it matters: The Celtics couldn’t hold it in any of their previous playoff series, needing a pair of road wins against Atlanta and Philadelphia to advance.
Boston was 32-9 at home in the regular season, tied for best in the East. On Wednesday night, the Celtics held a home crowd with a 13-point lead in the second quarter, but Miami outscored them 46-25 in the third quarter and the fans responded with boos.
Celtics coach Joe Mazzola said he didn’t think the problem was where he was playing as much as what he was playing.
He said, “I don’t think that has anything to do with it.” “We’ve won three of the four quarters. We’ve come away from where we are in the third quarter, whether it’s home or away.”
Teams used to dread visiting the original Boston Garden, with stories of cold showers in the visitors’ locker room and dead spots in the ground that only the Celtics knew to avoid. The 1986 Celtics lost just one regular season game there, then went 10-0 at home in the playoffs to claim their third NBA title in six seasons.
But that building went and was replaced in 1995. The new building has served the Celtics well — they won an unprecedented 17th NBA title on their famous hardwood floors in 2008 — but it didn’t seem to inspire the same fear in opponents.
“We just go out there and try to win basketball games,” Heat guard Kyle Lowry said. “At the end of the day, we’re the eight seeds, so we’re on the road. We have to go out and try to win games on the road. We don’t have the advantage of playing four games at home, so we have to go out and try to win games on the road.”
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