The Heat let the Celtics win one, now will the Celtics live up to their threat?

BOSTON -- The Celtics said everything they were supposed to say when they were down 3-0 to the Miami Heat, urging their counterparts not to give them a glimmer of hope on Tuesday.

Borrowing from Kevin Millar's playbook, both Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart warned the Heat not to let the C's "get one" ahead of Game 4 in Miami. But the Celtics have been talking all season, and they haven't always lived up to their words, so Miami likely saw that as a hollow threat.

The Celtics lived up to their words on Tuesday, playing their best game since they sent the Philadelphia 76ers packing nearly two weeks ago. They played defense. They moved the basketball. Jayson Tatum even hit a shot in the fourth quarter.

Boston got its first win of the series and kept its season alive. Now the Celtics have to keep it going if they want to put out a 2023 remake of the 2004 Boston Red Sox fairytale. One win in the Conference Finals is not going to make for a storybook ending, since losing 4-1 to an eight-seed would still be an embarrassing and disappointing finish to the season. 

"Now we've just got to go win another one. That's all that matters," Smart said after Game 4. "We take it one game at a time. We understand the odds are stacked against us, but we're a team that believes in us no matter what, and we've just got to keep going, and all that matters is the next game."

The Celtics got back to playing their brand of winning basketball on Tuesday, which had gone amiss when the mighty eight-seeded Heat invaded TD Garden last Wednesday. It started on the defensive end in Game 4, where Boston looked locked in for the first time all series. Their renewed vigor on defense kept the Heat from lighting it up on the perimeter again (Miami shot just 25 percent from downtown, after shooting 48 percent over the first three games) and let the Celtics get out and run on offense. Boston turned 16 Miami giveaways into 27 points on Tuesday night.

"We were just playing Celtics basketball on the defensive end," said Smart. "Everybody was helping one another. We were going to take it. Weren't leaving it up for grabs as much as we usually did and it showed tonight. That's just how we've got to continue to play."

When Boston's defense feeds its offense, good things happen for the Celtics. It allows them to get out and run, and that's what they did throughout Game 4, racing for 18 points. It also gets the ball moving, which kept Miami defenders guessing and guys open all over the floor.

The Celtics hit 18 threes on Tuesday, and an assist was attached to 15 of them. Boston logged 28 assists on 43 made buckets in the victory. When they share the ball like that, it shows they care. It was something we hadn't seen in Games 1 through 3.

That is what Celtics basketball is supposed to be. That is the kind of play that won them 57 games during the regular season and had them back in the Eastern Conference Finals. That is the play that led the team on an 18-0 run in the third quarter on Tuesday night, flipping a nine-point Heat lead into a nine-point Celtics lead by the end of the quarter. 

Down nine in the third, the Celtics could have packed it in and started thinking about fancy trips to exotic beaches. But they buckled down, locked down, and now the whole team has a renewed sense of confidence. 

What they can't do now is what seemingly always do, and allow that confidence to lead to the very same lapses that put them in a 3-0 hole.

"Even though we won, there's things that we've got to clean up and be ready for the adjustments from game to game," said Tatum.

The Celtics still have their backs against the wall and now they have to win a home game Thursday night to keep the season going. Usually, some home cooking is a good thing for a team trying to stay alive, but the Celtics are just 4-5 at TD Garden this season.

The Celtics remedied just about everything that plagued them over the first three games on Tuesday night. Fixing that lackluster home record on Thursday will give them another shot to rewrite the NBA history books, and really turn the temperature up on the Heat.

"We want to come back to Miami," Brown said of forcing a Game 6. "If that happens, I feel like we'll feel good about ourselves. The next one should be fun. It should be a big one, and we've got to come ready to play."