Miami Heat forward Caleb Martin once again found himself in the middle of a dustup with a member of the Boston Celtics.
This time it came with Celtics point guard Payton Pritchard after Martin and Jaylen Brown got into it following a hard foul on Jayson Tatum late in Game 1.
Martin and Pritchard exchanged words in the waning seconds of the third quarter in Boston’s Game 3 win over Miami on Saturday at Kaseya Center. The two got face-to-face after Sam Hauser fouled Tyler Herro and Herro softly tossed the ball back at Hauser’s feet.
Pritchard made sure to voice his displeasure after the play — Herro was assessed a technical foul — and Martin had no issue jawing right back.
“It’s just the competitiveness of the game,” Pritchard told reporters Sunday, per MassLive’s Souichi Terada. “He threw the ball at Sam. Obviously, I’m going to be there for my teammate like we all are. Got a little chippy, but I’ve never been one to back down from any situation. That’s kind of the fun part of the game, though. I don’t think it’s nothing crazy. It’s not like we have hatred necessarily off the court. But when we’re on the hardwood, we’re going to war.”
Martin saw the incident similarly to Pritchard and doesn’t hold any animosity toward the Celtics guard.
“It’s just us being competitive,” Martin told reporters, per CLNS Media’s Bobby Manning. “He does a lot of stuff similar to what I do for our team. He’s one of those guys who has that type of approach and likes to bring that dog mentality to their team. We’re just competing and just trying to get after it. Obviously, being down at that point, too, you get frustrated. Overall, we’re all just trying to do whatever we can to get our team a win.”
The on-court scuffles aren’t out of the norm for the Celtics and Heat given their recent playoff history. The two sides have faced off in three out of the last four Eastern Conference finals, with two of those series going all seven games.
And there could be more on the way with the Celtics trying to take a 3-1 series lead with a win in Game 4 on Monday.
“It’s fun; it’s a rivalry to me,” Pritchard said, per Terada. “We play them so many times. We see them every playoffs, so it’s turned into a rivalry. You play them seven times in the playoffs, that’s a lot of games, seeing the same people. It brings the best out of you, though.”
