BOSTON – The Atlanta Hawks are fresh off their most convincing win of their first-round series with the Boston Celtics, but they say they must come out with a higher level of focus Thursday night in order to close out the C’s at TD Garden.
Atlanta’s 27-point win Tuesday night certainly filled the team with confidence heading back to Boston, but it expects a different type of game from the Celtics knowing they’re down three games to two and on the verge of postseason elimination.
“It’s a lot different,” forward Paul Millsap said following Atlanta’s shootaround Thursday morning. “Just gotta have a different focus, a different level of attentiveness to close it out because they’re going to come out fighting for their lives.”
With their season on the line, the Celtics will be playing with a heightened sense of urgency. That’s something the Hawks must consider Thursday night, says coach Mike Budenholzer.
“I think it’s fair to say that anytime you’re trying to close out a team, that’s the most difficult game,” said Budenholzer. “There’s a desperation that they’ll have and that you have to match.”
The coach did add, however, that the majority of his squad has been in this situation before and has succeeded.
Last season, the Hawks closed out two playoff opponents in Game 6s on the road. First they finished off Brooklyn with a 24-point first-round-clinching win; then they edged Washington by three points to secure their second-round victory.
There will be one difference with this close-out game, however, and that is the crowd.
Last year’s series-clinching wins may have come on the road, but they surely weren’t being played in front of a crowd as hostile as the one that will be at TD Garden tonight. Atlanta has yet to win a game at the Garden during this series, and the rowdiness of Celtics Nation has played a large part in that.
Dennis Schroder knows all about that enthusiasm, as Boston fans have booed him relentlessly ever since his physical altercation with Isaiah Thomas during Game 3.
“They got a good crowd and they’re helping their players,” said Schroder. “We just gotta fight through it; it’s the Playoffs and both [teams] want to win.”
Added Millsap, “”It’s tough. We know what their crowd does. We know that they feed off the crowd, so we have to take them out of it as early as we can.”
Atlanta tried to take the Celtics out early during its Game 4 matchup in Boston, as it built up a 16-point lead by the midway point of the third quarter. But the Celtics kicked into gear and their ever-faithful fan base didn’t cease its cheering and jeering, as Boston came from behind to win in overtime.
Four-time All-Star center Al Horford, who totaled just 13 points during Games 3 and 4, insisted that the Hawks are “not letting the crowd effect us,” and he doesn’t expect his team’s locked-in focus will change Thursday night.
“I feel like we’ve been very engaged as a group,” he said. “Even the games that we’ve lost here we’ve played well, they just played better than us. So it’s no different tonight.”
There will be one major difference on the opposing bench, however, as the Celtics will be playing with a greater sense of urgency in order to avoid elimination. And, as Millsap indicated before, expect the Green to come out fighting for their lives with their thunderous home crowd at their back.
