National Basketball Association

Celtics-Heat series lacks drama, but maybe that's not such a bad thing

Published May. 20, 2022 2:53 p.m. ET

By Charlotte Wilder
FOX Sports Columnist

The NBA is known for being the most dramatic league in sports, and the most entertaining players are great performers. Like all the great reality stars, athletes tease each other with veiled subtweets, call each other out with not-so-veiled TV appearances, wear phenomenal outfits as they come and go to games, flop to appear hurt and draw fouls, then make fun of each other for doing so.

Then there are, of course, the games themselves. What’s more breathtaking than watching 35-year-old Al Horford bend space and time when he dunks the entire Milwaukee Bucks team in Fiserv Forum back to Boston? Or looking on as Giannis does, well, literally anything?

This league has already given us plenty of spectacle as it enjoys its version of awards season: The Playoffs. While the second round blessed us with lots of juicy gossip in the West and close games in the East, the Conference finals have yet to really kick into high gear.

On Tuesday night, the Heat beat the Celtics 118-107 after Boston gave up a lead (a habit that sends Celtics fans back to nightmares of January). On Thursday, Boston whooped Miami’s butt, 127-102. You know it’s bad when the announcers spend most of the fourth quarter talking about coaching philosophies as both teams empty out their benches.

In fact, college football overtook the NBA in the Drama Department this week, when the King of Alabama, Nick Saban, decided to roll the dice on the whole "mutually assured destruction" thing and call out Jimbo Fisher, saying that his Aggies "bought every player on their team." Watching the fallout has been better than an episode of "Selling Sunset."

Which is why I need basketball to step it up. No one has gotten really spicy in a postgame presser in the third round. The stakes are already high with a trip to the Finals on the line, but I would also like them to be messy and entertaining, thank you very much.

The only part of Game 1 that I found enjoyable as a Celtics fan was Marcus Smart’s beautiful outfit, which was apparently Christian Dior and looked like the most luxurious, silky, Millennial pink bandana I have ever seen (if I had NBA player money, I would have bought it yesterday). Smart was wearing it, of course, because he wasn’t wearing his uniform, because he wasn’t playing.

Out with a sprained foot, he was still the team glue he has always been, coaching guys up on the bench and the first to get up to celebrate baskets.

Still, the Heat absolutely dominated the Celtics. Both Miami and Boston — the No. 1 and 2 seeds, respectively — play defense like they’re defending a shoveled-out parking spot in South Boston: with great determination, persistence and unrelenting pressure. But Boston looked like a shell of itself in Game 1. The guys seemed tired after a seven-game battle with the Bucks, and in addition to missing Smart, Horford couldn’t suit up because he had entered COVID protocols.

Watching Boston without Smart and Horford was a bizarre experience as a Boston fan. It was like having Thanksgiving as Mom and Dad watch through a window while the kids — Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Grant Williams, etc — tried to roast the turkey. They couldn’t, even with Tatum cooking up 29 points, eight rebounds, six assists and four steals.

But with Mom and Dad back, dinner was served in Game 2. At the half, the Celtics possessed the largest lead they’ve ever had on the road in their storied postseason history, 70-45. Afterward, Smart said that Tatum and Brown put a lot of pressure on themselves, and that he and Horford take it upon themselves to guide the team.

"I was pumped," Smart said about the win. "I felt bad that I couldn't be out there with my teammates and go to battle with them."

"They tried to embarrass us," Miami star Jimmy Butler said after losing at home. "They did embarrass us. So I think we got to realize that, use it as fuel, whatever you want to say, but realize the game can get out of hand when you're playing against a really good team like them that can score the ball and get stops."

I’ve talked about stars and drama, but maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe what I really want is quiet confidence and a well-executed plan, which is what Celtics coach Ime Udoka provides.

His work this year is remarkable — this is only his first season as head coach, and he’s already managed to turn around a team that was ranked No. 10 in January to give it its best shot at winning the Finals since, I would argue, Boston’s last championship in 2008.

Thursday’s was a statement Udoka win. He’s adept at picking his team up and dusting it off after big losses — the team has lost back-to-back games only once since February. He came up with a game plan to make sure the Celtics’ defense did NOT let Miami park in its shoveled-out space. The Celtics worked as a wool blanket on the Heat, extinguishing any chance that Miami would warm up an offense that could get something going.

And Boston’s shots were stunning, too. Udoka seemed to fix everything after an early timeout in Game 2 when Miami was up 18-8. After that, the pieces came together.

Thursday was a statement win for Boston. They head home this weekend tied, which is obviously a much better place to play from than trying to dig out of a two-game hole. The team is now 5-2 on the road this postseason.

So perhaps the angle of this piece is entirely wrong.

Maybe, when it comes to the teams we root for, we should actually hope that things are as boring as possible as long as the end result is a W. If the Celtics keep winning, I’m fine leaving the drama to college football.

Charlotte Wilder is a general columnist and cohost of "The People's Sports Podcast" for FOX Sports. She's honored to represent the constantly neglected Boston area in sports media, loves talking to sports fans about their feelings and is happiest eating a hotdog in a ballpark or nachos in a stadium. Follow her on Twitter @TheWilderThings.