The Boston Celtics already were facing an uphill battle heading into their first-round series against the Brooklyn Nets. Now, they're down 1-0 against arguably the most talented team in the league.
Despite a hard-fought first half in which they limited Brooklyn to 47 points, the Celtics couldn't hold on in the second half of Game 1 and fell by a score of 104-93. They'll look to even the series Tuesday night, but is there any hope for a competitive series that goes six or even seven games?
Brian Robb of MassLive.com joined Chris Forsberg on a brand new episode of the Celtics Talk Podcast to discuss.
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"I think they did show a bit of the roadmap last night in terms of defensively," Robb said. "Can Kemba [Walker], [Evan] Fournier, [Jayson] Tatum get going at the same time, or with one wild card coming off the bench to give you something? And [Saturday] night, the Celtics bench soundly outplayed the Brooklyn bench which you would have not expected going into this series just based on the talent level there.
"For me, what you really want to see is Brad Stevens at his best from a scheme standpoint in terms of seeing what Brooklyn did defensively, finding where those weak spots are ... There's a lot of places to pick at."
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Robb believes the C's defensive effort in Game 1 showed they could make the series go longer than people originally expected.
"There is a way for this team to make this a 2-1 series as opposed to just Sunday being the beginning of the end for this group," he added. "We could get to six games here. I think that's what we saw last night. I went Nets in five for the series, but there is a roadmap to push that to six. Defensively they showed more on Saturday than I think we've seen in weeks upon weeks and I think that should count for something."
Also in the new episode: Was Game 1 the Celtics’ best chance to steal a win? Can Kemba Walker rebound and have a bigger impact in Game 2? Is Robert Williams the Celtics' X-factor? And what do C's fans want to see in Game 2?
Check out the latest episode of the Celtics Talk Podcast on your favorite podcast app or watch it on YouTube below.