CLEVELAND — For these Celtics, there’s no place like the road.
The road Monday started smooth, paved with pregame injury luck. Then it turned rocky, littered with turnovers and obstructed by a wounded dog.
But by the end of the night, the road led the Celtics exactly where they want to be: back home with a chance to clinch a spot in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Boston held off the short-handed Cavaliers 109-102 in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference semifinal matchup Monday to gain a 3-1 stranglehold on the series. Jayson Tatum played one of his best games of the playoffs, pocketing 33 points, 11 rebounds and five assists. Jaylen Brown scored 27 points, including a dagger 3-pointer on the right wing that lifted the C’s to an 8-point lead with 1:09 left.
Tatum, who dished to Brown after curling into the middle, celebrated by thumping his All-Star on the chest as he trotted back to the bench.
“High-intensity game, he hit a big shot,” Tatum said. “I was hype.”
But Brown’s triple was the last of six field goals Boston made in the fourth quarter, a dry spell that allowed their 15-point lead to slip to as little as five down the stretch. The Celtics leaned on their defense to keep them ahead of a star-less Cleveland squad that scored just seven points over the last four and a half minutes without Donovan Mitchell.
“Everybody talks about clutch offense, I thought our clutch defense was good,” Boston coach Joe Mazzulla said. “We got stops when we needed to. We had some 50-50 balls that we got to, and we executed our late-game defense.”
Boston remains unbeaten on the road this postseason and can end the series Wednesday night at TD Garden. Tip-off for Game 5 is set for 7 p.m.
Mitchell, a five-time All-Star, was ruled out with the calf strain he suffered late Saturday night in Game 3. He rode the bench alongside starting center Jarrett Allen, who has yet to appear in this series due to bruised ribs. Together, their absences made the Cavs a rare, double-digit home underdog, a billing they refuse to live up to most of the night.
Powered by a screaming, sold-out crowd, Cleveland staked an 8-2 lead within the first two minutes. That burst prompted Mazzulla to call a timeout that ultimately triggered a 19-2 Boston run fueled by Tatum and Brown buckets. But the Mitchell-less Cavs fought that fire with a newfound offensive freedom and blazing 3-point shooting to stay within single digits through the rest of the quarter.
“They have to play a little bit differently when he’s not out there,” Tatum said, “so it can take a quarter or two to figure out what you need to do to win the game.”
As Tatum rested to start the second, a scoring burst from Jrue Holiday (16 points, 7 rebounds) pushed the Celtics’ lead to as many as 13. Once Tatum returned, Cavs forward Max Strus — perhaps peeved that Brown had grabbed his ankle from the floor earlier in the quarter — knocked down back-to-back 3s, pulling Cleveland back within one score midway through the quarter.
The renewed tension of a tight game remained intact until Tatum drilled a step-back 3 from the left wing in the final seconds of the half. That score gave Boston some breathing room heading into halftime at 62-57, a margin tighter than expected thanks to the Cavs’ shooting and Celtics’ careless turnovers.
Boston had 10 giveaways at the break — including four from Brown. Mazzulla ascribed the Celtics’ butterfingers to a lack of poise, saying the key was just throwing the ball “to the guys in the green jerseys.”
“When balls are getting deflected and thrown out of bounds, just pass. That’s it. I’m being dead serious,” Mazzulla said. “Just stay spaced and make the right pass.”
Strus canned five 3s in the first half to match his total from Games 1-3 combined. Cleveland also received a small boost from little-used sharpshooter Sam Merrill, who finished with two 3-pointers. Merrill and newly promoted starter Caris Levert helped offset Mitchell’s absence, while Darius Garland (team-high 30 points) took over as lead ball-handler and scorer.
Though without a steady stream of turnovers, none of them could crack a recommitted Celtics defense immediately after halftime. Thus, a run-and-gun first half led into a sluggish third quarter highlighted by another late, step-back Celtics 3-pointer. This time, Payton Pritchard (11 points) let Boston drop its shoulders by splashing a deep 3 over Cavs backup Dean Wade from atop the arc with seconds to play for a 98-88 lead.
As Tatum set out to play the entire fourth quarter, and opened with consecutive jumpers, the Celtics appeared ready to put Cleveland to bed early. Instead, the drought hit, and Boston made one field goal — a Tatum put-back — between Brown’s turn-around jumper at 7:56 to go and his dagger 3 with barely a minute remaining. Brown credited the Celtics’ consistent rebounding for keeping them afloat.
“I think that’s the key,” Brown said. “You see a lot of times, especially in these games, teams get up shots and just rebound after rebound after rebound. We allowed them to get one shot. Whether it was a make or miss, they only got one shot, and we played it from there.”
During that stretch, the Cavs twice cut the Celtics’ lead to five; first with an Evan Mobley layup at 7:15 left and a LeVert drive under two minutes to play. Then Strus fouled out, which funneled four of Cleveland’s last seven shots to Garland, who couldn’t carry the late-game load that normally belongs to Mitchell.
And so the Celtics escaped, thanks to free throws from Tatum and Derrick White, who returned after briefly heading into the locker room in the third quarter. White had five points, while Pritchard, backup center Luke Kornet and Sam Hauser combined for 21 off the bench.
