Two days ago, Boston suffered one of its most humiliating losses of the season - 111:130 against Washington, which turned on quite a few warning lights.
Tonight (between Thursday and Friday) the Celtics recovered, and how they recovered, with one of their biggest victories in recent years - an amazing 99:140 over the leader of the East, Milwaukee.
Now the gap from the Bucks stands at only two games, which leaves the Greens another chance to finish at the top of the conference, and perhaps achieve the best balance in the NBA that guarantees a home advantage throughout the playoffs.
The first two in the East have five games left until the end of the regular season.
"We want to finish the season strong, and we'll see what happens," said Jaylen Brown, who finished with 30 points.
"We've been pretty steady throughout most of the season. Maybe we should be closer to 60 wins right now, but we're a better team than last year. We may have lost a few games, but we didn't let one bad game turn into a bad two weeks or a bad month. We were able to bounce back."
The Celtics finished the season 1:2 on the Bucks, thanks in large part to 40 points from Jayson Tatum.
"We have a lot of history with them," he said.
"We know them well and if we meet in the playoffs, it probably won't look like that. They could have played much better, missed a lot of free throws. It's a difficult matchup for us."
Al Horford said about his pair of stars: "It's amazing, so fun to watch them. They made the right decision every time, it was a special game for them."
On the other hand, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who finished with 24 points, admitted: "If you don't play hard or be focused, they'll kick your ass. It's very simple. There's nothing to worry about, we just have to remember it, and it's up to us, how we react. Will we play like this again ? If we play like this again, there will be the same result. We have to change things. We have to compete. We have to show some pride."
Julius Randle, who injured his ankle during the win over Miami, will be out for at least two weeks.
The New York star is having the best season of his career with 25.1 points (46 percent from the field), 10 rebounds and 4.1 assists per game, and will hope to be eligible for the start of the playoffs, which will start in exactly two weeks.
The Knicks will no longer be able to catch up with the fourth Cleveland, and will now try to maintain the fifth place - currently, they are 2.5 games away from the sixth Brooklyn.
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Boston Celtics
Milwaukee Bucks
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Julius Randle