Here’s the South Florida Sun Sentinel reporting on the Celtics, who got Gordon Hayward back in action Saturday in winning Game 3. The Heat still lead the series 2-1, with Game 4 to be played on Wednesday:
With Gordon Hayward back in the mix, the Celtics are making no pretense about anything other than getting their top five players on the court as much as possible the balance of these Eastern Conference finals as often as feasible.
“Well, the hard part about that is we never had all five or very rarely had all five available during the regular season before the hiatus,” Stevens said of the quintet of Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart and Hayward. “It was only like 12 or 13 games. And then when we got here, Kemba wasn’t practicing for the first few weeks, so we never really got into that stuff much.”
Then came Hayward’s return in Saturday’s Game 3 from a month off due to a severely sprained ankle, with the goal now to tie the series in Wednesday’s 8:30 p.m. Game 5 in the best-of-seven series at Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex.
“The idea was that we have to get those guys on the court as much as possible,” Stevens said of Game 3.
