Gordon Hayward declared himself ready to play Saturday night following a pre-game workout, bringing some skill and ball movement to a Celtics team in need of the forward’s playmaking and shooting.
Hayward suffered a grade three sprain of his right ankle in Game 1 of the Celtics’ first-round series against Philadelphia. He had missed nine games prior to Saturday’s Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals against Miami.
With the Celtics starting the night in an 0-2 hole, and clearly confounded by Miami’s zone coverage, Hayward’s court sense was going to be a key weapon. But there is that matter of game shape.
The Celtics brought him off the bench on what Brad Stevens termed “minutes monitoring.”
“That’s just him, he tells us how he feels,” the Celtics coach said of Saturday’s determining factor. “He’s played three-on-three the last couple of days. I would anticipate he’ll be available, but it’s his call. That’s really based on how he feels.”
The benefits are obvious, especially for a struggling team.
“Everything you’ve seen all year, like he’s a great passer, he can score the ball, he can switch all the defensive positions, so he gives us a lot of defensive flexibility there,” said Stevens. “He just gives us a lot, and he’s always been a guy who provides a great sense of stability. He’s coming back from a four-and-a-half-week break, so we don’t expect him to be a world-beater. But his presence helps us.”
Back to work
Wednesday night’s tumultuous post-game scene – with Marcus Smart storming out of the locker room and the sound of shouting players and thumping furniture coming from within – was replaced by a back-to-business attitude, according to Stevens. According to reports from ESPN and The Athletic, Stevens held a meeting later that night with Smart, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and Kemba Walker to calm down feelings.
“Good,” Stevens said of how his players have since responded. “Like anybody else – when you want something really bad and you come up short, especially when it’s going well for you, there’s going to be some scarring. There was some scarring the other night and it showed itself. That’s part of a team. And the team reconnects, re-centers, and gets back to go to work. That’s what you do.
“I don’t know that I’ve learned a lot,” he said when asked what the incident told him about his team. “I mean obviously when you’re in the middle of this, everything is going to be probably much more discussed. But teams have times where emotions come up. That’s just a part of it. So I wouldn’t say it’s like – every team I’ve ever been on in the last 20 years of coaching has had a moment or two.”
Un-friend zone
The Celtics’ struggles against the Miami zone have exposed a major offensive flaw.
“Well, they deserve a lot of credit. They’re a really good team,” said Stevens. “They’ve got great schemes, they do great things, and there’s two teams out there. We weren’t very good on either end of the floor in the second half. We need to be better in what we’re trying to do and play better if we want to have a chance to win.
“I mean it’s interesting. I think there’s things that we have to do a lot better, and at the same time, we’ve been pretty good for five out of eight quarters. So it’s one of those situations like you don’t want to totally overreact because when we’re at our best, we’ve been good. But you have to play 48 minutes against these guys. That’s been proven over and over, not just with our series, but with all the other series. You really have to earn it if you’re going to beat them.”
