Joe Mazzulla and the Boston Celtics got their revenge Wednesday, closing out their first round series against the Miami Heat.
The Celtics won Game Five 118-84 in Boston to end the 4-1 series victory. Mazzulla only relied on two of his starters, Jrue Holiday and Jayson Tatum, to play more than 30 minutes in the clinching game.
Miami defeat Boston last season in the Eastern Conference Finals, where Mazzulla served as the Celtics’ interim head coach in place of former head coach Ime Udoka. The 4-3 series ended with the Heat holding Boston to just 84 points, a favor the Celtics returned Wednesday.
Boston enters the second round red hot as the league’s top seed in the regular season and now demise of the reigning Eastern Conference champions. Mazzulla also has one of the NBA’s most talented and complete rosters at his disposal.
Tatum, the team’s 26-year-old star, entered this season with back-to-back All-NBA First Team selections and seems to be in line for his third after averaging 26.9 points, 8.1 rebounds, 4.9 assists, and a steal in 74 games. Alongside three-time All-Star Jaylen Brown, Tatum looks to win Boston’s first championship since 2008.
33-year-old Holiday, who won the 2021 NBA Championship with the Milwaukee Bucks, brings veteran leadership and defensive prowess essential to accomplishing that goal. Holiday is a two-time All-Star and three-time member of the All-Defensive First Team.
Alongside his trio of stars, Mazzulla proved he has plenty of secondary options in the first round. Guard Derrick White, who is in his second year with the Celtics, scored a career high 38 points in Boston’s Game Four win in Miami.
The Celtics do have cause for concern entering the second round, though, as they may be without a key contributor. Kristaps Porzingis, who Boston traded 2022 Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart for this offseason, suffered a calf injury in Game Four and is expected to miss the entire second round.
“I don’t know the specifics of (the injury). They use a lot of fancy words,” Mazzulla said, “but I do know it will be re-evaluated next week.”
“We’ll see how he responds to the treatment and how much better he gets here in the first week. That’s kind of the goal is to rehab it like crazy over the next week and see where we’re at from there.”
Porzingis averaged 20.1 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks per game in 29.6 minutes per game this regular season from the center position. Mazzulla will look to five-time All-Star Al Horford to cover Porzingis’s lost minutes.
For now, Mazzulla and the Celtics have time to rest as they wait for their second round opponents to be revealed. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic, who play the sixth game of their first round series on Friday, are Boston’s potential opponents. Cleveland leads the series 3-2 over Orlando. Boston held a 2-1 advantage in the regular season series against both teams.
