Celtics’ Game 1 performance vs. Heat shows why it’s #DifferentHere

Sunday’s Game 1 win over the Miami Heat was a picture-perfect way for the Boston Celtics to kick off their climb toward Banner 18.

The series opener featured one of the most impressive starts to a game that we’ve seen this season. Boston poured in a quick 14 points before the Heat were able to sink their first basket and never really looked back. The Cs captured the Game 1 win in wire-to-wire fashion and did an excellent job of taking the wind out of the “watch out for the Heat” crowd’s sails.

After the way that last season came to a close, there had been plenty of speculation that the Celtics could have themselves a dogfight in the first round with the Heat.

Photo by Chris Marion/NBAE via Getty Images

Miami is a team that just won’t seem to die. They made an underdog run to the NBA Finals in 2020, beating the Cs in the Eastern Conference Finals, then they pushed Boston to the brink in 2022 but ultimately lost Game 7 at home, despite fighting off a Game 6 elimination at TD Garden, and then, of course, beating Boston again in 2023 as the No. 8 seed.

If there was any team that could cause an early scare, it would be them (even with Jimmy Butler sidelined with an MCL sprain) with their inevitable plot armor.

Things could very well wind up going that way, but after what we all witnessed on Sunday, it feels like the Celtics are having absolutely none of that.

They not only won Game 1 and prevented any whispers of a Heat upset from getting started, but they did so in dominant fashion.

The 14-0 run that Kristaps Porzingis and his teammates ripped off to start the game helped anxious spectators like myself relax a bit and enjoy a WHOMPING.

“We came out the right way,” he said (h/t CLNS Media). “We’re the first ones to punch them and yeah, we got off to a good start, and from that point on, we kept it going.”

In hindsight, it’s a bit crazy to buy into the idea that a team that has had the league’s top record locked up for some time would be rattled by a group that just had to survive the Play-In Tournament.

Porzingis explained that starting strong and maintaining urgency were points of emphasis for him and his teammates as they awaited meaningful games again once they’d secured the top seed.

“Yeah, that was an emphasis for us, just knowing that we’ve been off for a little bit and we’ve kind of secured our place, and so it was difficult for us to trick ourselves to maintain this crazy mindset of winning every regular season game past that point, knowing that we have the real thing coming soon,” the big man detailed. “I’m glad that we came out the way we came out tonight, and we just set the stage for the rest of our path.”

It’s clear that the Cs aren’t taking their opponents lightly this season, after dropping both Games 1 & 2 at home in the Eastern Conference Finals last spring.

“Definitely think it was a good start,” Derrick White told reporters (h/t CLNS Media). “We didn’t like walk into the game per se, especially with the longer layoff. Just wanted to be aggressive to start, and we did a good job with that.”

That understanding spans past just this afternoon. White, Porzingis, and the rest of the team have been taking things game-by-game all season, and that isn’t stopping now. Though hot starts would be nice every night, all they can really do is control what they can control.

“If we could start like that every game, that would be great,” White added. “Just continuing to make the right play and right read every single time. That’s just what the focus was.”

Boston did everything within their power to control and win Game 1. Doing the small things like making the right play or right read each time down the floor is what will win this team playoff games. Sure, the talent on the roster is unreal, but Joe Mazzulla has done a tremendous job of not letting the players lean on talent. Instead, they’re leaning into mindset.

Shout out to Mazzulla and the fellas for giving us two days of “hey, the Celtics might be better than we all thought” talk from the national media, rather than a bunch of “hey, watch out for the Heat, they always beat the Celtics” chatter.

It truly does feel #DifferentHere this year.