As you may have expected, Sunday’s Game 1 clash between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat did not end without incident. Ultimately, it was Boston who secured a 114-94 victory to take a 1-0 series lead, but unsurprisingly, Miami did not go down without a fight.
This was literally almost the case in the dying moments of the game after the two teams got involved in a heated altercation after a hard foul on Jayson Tatum.
Boston Celtics News: Joe Mazzulla Reacts to Jayson Tatum Incident
Tatum suffered an injury scare late in the fourth quarter after his back hit the deck hard. The Celtics superstar was shoved mid-air by Heat forward Caleb Martin, which saw Tatum fall back-first into the hardwood:
Things getting heated between Jaylen Brown and Caleb Martin after Martin upends Tatum, who took a hard fall 👀pic.twitter.com/85fxggdwG3
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) April 21, 2024
It was a bit of an alarming moment after seeing Tatum hit his back that hard on the ground. Thankfully, the five-time All-Star was able to get back up immediately and avoid any type of injury. His back is probably going to be sore tomorrow, though.
For his part, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla had a rather unexpected reaction to the incident:
“I was waiting to see what he was gonna do. I was kind of excited about the whole situation. So I enjoyed watching it.”
truihgtiuhtu4ew pic.twitter.com/AIxfm74dbA
— Ben Hustle (@BenHustle4) April 21, 2024
Mazzulla is anything but your typical NBA coach. After realizing that his superstar was fine, the Celtics shot-caller got excited to see how things would unfold after the play.
True enough, Tatum got right back up, and the rest of the Celtics made sure the Heat players knew that they weren’t going to take this type of nonsense. Miami may have wanted to send a bit of a message to Boston here with that hard foul, but it appears that it may have backfired on the Heat.
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