Celtics

Al Horford leads Celtics over Cavaliers in Game 5 and into Eastern Conference finals: 10 takeaways

Horford posts 22 points on 8-for-15 shooting along with 15 rebounds and five assists to give the Celtics a 113-98 victory Wednesday night.

By Tom Westerholm

May 16, 2024

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The Celtics finished off an incredibly short-handed Cavaliers team on Wednesday, advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals with a 113-98 victory. 

Here are the takeaways. 

1. For all of the hand-wringing about the Celtics, they are now where we all expected them to be: In the Eastern Conference Finals. They have lost just two games in the postseason to date while outscoring opponents by precisely the same margin per 100 possessions (+11.3) that they did in the regular season. 

So why is everyone so concerned about this team? 

Is it because the opponents have been mediocre? That’s what happens when you’re the No. 1 seed: You get an easier path. 

Is it because the opponents have been banged up? The Celtics have been without Kristaps Porzingis – arguably their second-most important player – for three weeks now, and they are 6-1 without him. They have a lot of good players.

Is it because of their crunch-time offense? A tendency to let opponents hang around? Again, the Celtics’ point differential in the playoffs is the same as the point differential that allowed them to build the NBA’s best record, and they’ve won 80 percent of their postseason games. 

The Celtics are not flawless or guaranteed a trip to the Finals, but they are consistent. One of their better qualities this season is that they have remained steadfastly level-headed.

“I thought the guys’ focus on the task at hand – they were very present,” Joe Mazzulla said. “‘This is how the game is going right now. This is what we’re doing well. This is what we’re not doing well. Continue to chip away at the things you can control, and figure it out.’ And I thought the guys did that well.”

The Celtics are guaranteed nothing going forward, but they have taken care of business to date.

“At the end of the day, if you say you want to win, everybody wants to win until it’s really time to win, because then you have to nut up and do a bunch of s— you don’t want to do,” Mazzulla said. “So the guys, credit to them, they consistently do that and we just have to keep that up.”

2. Every deep playoff run has a few genuinely memorable moments, and Al Horford delivered a good one on Wednesday. In a closeout game, the 37-year-old broke out of a shooting slump to post 22 points on 8-for-15 shooting along with 15 rebounds and five assists. Maybe more importantly, he locked Darius Garland up on switches after struggling to defend Cleveland’s ball-handlers throughout the series. 

For what it’s worth, Mazzulla made sure to point out that he didn’t think Horford struggled defensively at all.

“We went to more switching, and they had to just guard your yard and defend at a high level,” Mazzulla said. “I thought Al did a great job, and I thought all the guys did.”

“I think his body is 27, it looks like out there,” Derrick White added. “He’s just everywhere. Just does everything for us. He’s been big-time for us every game I’ve been here. Tonight was huge.”

Horford emphasized the importance of finishing off the series at home. 

“For me, the biggest thing was bringing energy – bringing energy to our group,” he said. “I felt like we lacked it in the first quarter, and when I came back in the second, I felt like we needed to step it up. We were talking about it a lot in the huddle, but we weren’t really getting it done. We had a great opportunity here at home to handle this, and I knew it was going to take a lot more than just playing a normal game.”

3. Mazzulla, who is 35, was asked about coaching his older big man.

“He made a decision to trust me, which he didn’t have to do,” Mazulla said. “A guy who has been around as long as he has, the stature that he’s had, the things that he’s accomplished, the coaches that he’s worked for, from Day 1, I felt the trust and the support. So I’m grateful for that.”

Horford called Mazzulla “key” for the Celtics’ success.

“Joe has been really good with that, and just as a leader, just as a leader of our group, we follow him,” Horford said. “He demands a lot from us and we’re right there. We’re plugging away and we know obviously we still have a ways to go. But he’s done a very good job this year.”

4. Horford said the Cavaliers pushed the Celtics to “the brink,” which is overstating things a bit: The Celtics needed just five games to dispatch the Cavs, and three of their four wins were by double digits. 

Still, the Cavaliers deserve credit for battling through injuries. Donovan Mitchell (who missed Games 4 and 5), Jarrett Allen (who missed the whole series) and Caris Levert (who missed Game 5) all missed Wednesday’s game, but it remained competitive thanks to contributions from Evan Mobley as well as former Celtics forward Marcus Morris. Morris came in for Isaac Okoro when Okoro got into foul trouble, and he poured in 25 points on 10-for-13 shooting, including 5-for-6 from behind the arc. 

The big takeaway here from five games? Donovan Mitchell is a superstar, with no qualifiers necessary. The series felt a little more questionable than Celtics fans may have liked when he was part of it, and it felt like a foregone conclusion when he wasn’t. 

5. With Jayson Tatum on the floor in the postseason, the Celtics are outscoring opponents by 13.3 points per 100 possessions. That total falls to 1.4 points per 100 possessions when he’s on the bench. 

On Wednesday, Tatum posted 25 efficient points, 10 rebounds, nine assists and four (!!) steals. In the postseason, he is now averaging roughly 24 points, 10 rebounds and six assists per game. 

6. After Game 4, Jaylen Brown said he had to get Tatum back after Tatum hit him with a haymaker of a slap in the fourth quarter, right after Brown nailed a big 3-pointer.

Tatum took his comeuppance well.

7. Brown was quiet as a scorer – just 11 points on nine shots – but he dished out seven assists, including a pair late that helped the Celtics put the game away. 

“We’re really getting to a stage where we understand what we can do individually,” Tatum said of himself and Brown. “We know how gifted we are offensively, but each night just kind of presents different challenges and being ready and up for the task to do whatever is needed because both of us are capable on the basketball court to do literally everything. Each night just may call for something different.”

8. The Celtics are going to be hard to beat when all five of their starters score in double digits and record four or more assists in one game.

“They tested our spacing discipline, they tested our trust in each other, and all the guys made plays down the stretch where we got 2-on-1s,” Mazzulla said. “We just made the right play over and over again. So it’s a credit to the guys’ discipline and execution and trust in each other.”

9. The Celtics have now made three straight Eastern Conference finals, and six times during Jaylen Brown’s eight seasons. Meanwhile, Tatum is 5-for-7.

“People might think it’s a given that we’re supposed to be here,” Tatum said. “But I give a lot of credit to everybody in the front office, the coaching staff, the trainers, the guys that handle the equipment, the ball boys, the cooks, the chefs, the security team, we’re all in this together. And I do — I mean that. Everybody has an effect on each other, and we all impact each other to help winning and build this culture that we have, and everybody should be proud of themselves. 

“Obviously it’s not the end-all, be-all – we want to win a championship. But we’re doing something right.”

10. If both the Nuggets and the Knicks win on Thursday, the Eastern Conference finals will start with Knicks vs. Celtics on Sunday in Boston. 

If either team loses on the road, the Eastern Conference finals will begin on Tuesday. 

“It’s a gift that we have the rest now, because we took advantage of the opportunity that we had,” Mazzulla said. “Now we can be grateful for that rest. But you don’t know. Sometimes rest isn’t good for you. Sometimes it is. We’ll at least take tomorrow off.