Celtics
The Celtics return to action Sunday at home against the Trail Blazers.
The Celtics took a double-digit lead and let their bench finish the job on Friday, holding on for dear life to claim a 101-100 win in a wild finish.
Here are the takeaways.
1. With 7:19 remaining in the first quarter, Harrison Barnes drove to the basket and left a layup on the rim. The ball stayed there for a second and fell off — part of a bizarre quarter in which the Celtics trailed 6-3 after nearly six minutes and the Kings scored just 15 points.
“This is a strange game,” Brian Scalabrine remarked on the NBC Sports Boston broadcast.
Scalabrine — who was simply referencing the cold shooting — had no way of knowing how right he would prove to be over the next 41 minutes. The Celtics led by as many as 18 in the fourth quarter, and they led by 14 when — with 9:24 still remaining — rookie Jordan Walsh subbed in for Jayson Tatum, signaling that the evening was over for the starters.
The bench unit held serve for a few minutes, but facing a desperate Kings team, the lead began to give way with 6:06 remaining when the Celtics 98-84. For the next six minutes, their only points were two 1-for-2 trips to the free-throw line by Oshae Brissett.
Meanwhile, Kings star De’Aaron Fox — who finished with 40 points — whittled the Celtics’ lead away until finally, with 27 seconds left, he banked in a triple that pushed the Kings in front 100-99.
That set the stage for Xavier Tillman to be the hero, floating in the game winner off an offensive rebound.
A reporter asked Joe Mazzulla what he was thinking as the lead slipped away. Predictably, he loved it.
“‘This is awesome,’” Mazzulla said, recounting what he thought. “Couldn’t simulate a better environment of stress, pressure, chaos. It’s a perfect environment to execute. … There’s no reason to call a timeout there because when Payton [Pritchard] got the ball inbounds, he created an advantage, and they were double-teaming every time, and so we were going to get a better shot. They were in a fix-it situation the entire possession. It allowed us to get a good look, it allowed us to get offensive rebounds because they couldn’t find us. We were off their bodies. I thought it was a perfect environment for practice.”
Mazzulla added that he was surprised the Kings called timeout in the aftermath, since Fox had been hurting the Celtics by going fast.
“I was fully anticipating them just getting the ball and going down and running, and so I thought that would have been worst-case scenario,” Mazzulla said. “So then when they called it, we were just able to execute — figure out what we wanted to do defensively.”
The Celtics held on during a chaotic final possession that saw three Kings shots go up in the air.
“It was pretty cool,” Kristaps Porzingis said. “I think it helped. It’s good for our team chemistry, those kinds of moments. And seeing Joe all hyped up on the sideline, it was pretty cool and a good win for us.”
2. For his part, Tillman said he felt good about the floater as soon as it left his hand. He added that the only other game-winner in his career was a tip dunk against Illinois in college.
“It was pretty cool, especially for us to really battle with them coming back and have the mental fortitude to not kind of get into it and to stay solid mentally and everybody keeps their composure,” Tillman said. “Shout out to Payton, he was holding us down with that and talking to us and keeping us cool, calm and relaxed.”
A reporter asked Tillman about Mazzulla, who — despite playing his bench the final nine minutes of the game — remained locked in.
“I’ve really enjoyed [playing for him,” Tillman said. “When I say he’s human, like he’s not big-headed at all. He’s really humble, really down to earth, really allows you to build a real relationship with him. And he’s really authentic himself and doesn’t really hold back. So it’s really cool to be authentic and not have to hold anything back or be a people-pleaser. So I’ve really enjoyed it, for sure.”
3. One fun thing about watching Pritchard play is that sometimes he just puts his head down and runs as fast as he can, bowling his way into the paint. He has a very tight handle and a great pull-up jumper, so when he hits his top speed, he often gains a step.
Pritchard finished with a team-high 21 points and went 5-for-10 from 3-point range.
4. Sam Hauser had one of the coldest nights in recent Celtics’ memory — a staggering 1-for-18 from the floor and 1-for-13 from 3-point range.
“That’s like Brett Favre having the most interceptions and touchdowns,” Mazzulla said. “Babe Ruth has the most strikeouts, doesn’t he? I think Babe had the most strikeouts and home runs at one point.”
Pritchard took a positive view of Hauser’s struggles as well.
“I almost look at this like it’s a good thing,” he said. “Like, Sam is to me the best catch-and-shoot shooter in the league. This is going to come back around. He can go like 10-for-10 like we’ve seen. We got a win with him missing as much as he did. So this game, really, he shoots normally, this is a 20-point game. So I think this is a good sign. That means the next couple games, he’s going to be on fire.”
5. The Celtics — who clinched the best record in the NBA on Wednesday — were free to try a few things out on Friday in addition to their all-bench close, including a zone defense.
“We charted a specific objective on the offensive end to see how many possessions we could get, and then defensively, it was to put ourselves in as many rotations as possible so that we could work on the reads in those rotations and practice rebounding out of rotations,” Mazzulla said. “So that will be the point of emphasis in the film, and that’s what we will go back and take a look at.”
A nice perk of clinching the best record in the NBA this early is that the Celtics can spend a couple of weeks experimenting just so they have film they can reference in the future.
6. That was a bad loss for the Kings, who slipped to eighth in the Western Conference standings — one game behind the Pelicans, and two behind the Suns for sixth to avoid the play-in.
7. The Celtics return to action Sunday at home against the Trail Blazers. They face the Bucks in Milwaukee on Wednesday before closing out their final three games of the regular season at TD Garden.
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