INDIANAPOLIS — Terry Rozier smirked widely in the locker room as questions surfaced about his football career after the free safety, ahem, athletic guard literally stole a win away from the Pacers in the closing seconds of a 112-111 Celtics victory at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Monday night.
“I played a little bit of everything,” Rozier said about his defensive back skills. “I played football though, so, I always brag about my football skills so I’ve got to show that.”
Rozier was the designed rover on the game-changing play, which was a mix of sound execution and luck by the C’s small-ball lineup. While Rozier will get the headlines, there were several secondary heroes in the final 29 seconds of the game that allowed the 23-year-old guard to rescue the visitors from a second-half letdown against Victor Oladipo (38 points) and the upstart Pacers.
Fittingly, it was Rozier who put the Celtics into a deep hole. With 52 seconds remaining in the game, he threw away an inbounds pass that ultimately resulted in a Celtics turnover after an official review. Oladipo scored the next time down, putting the Celtics down five with 29 seconds remaining. No team had come back from that deficit in under 30 seconds all season long per ESPN’s Stats and Info, but this group did not panic. Instead, Brad Stevens used the team’s final timeout to set up a great look for the team’s top scorer.
Irving acts first as a screener for Jayson Tatum who sprints off to the right wing. The point guard quickly reverts into scorer mode, peeling off to the right while Al Horford sets a monster screen for him that forces a switch. Irving gets Domantas Sabonis on him alone on the wing and the big man has to give Irving some room to protect against penetration. The All-Star recognizes this right away and buries a 3 to trim the lead to two.
The Pacers came back and hit two more free throws, and I actually have to give Indy some credit for their play late. Outside of Rozier’s steal on the game-winner, this group played sensational ball in the fourth quarter. Oladipo was an absolute force on offense (30 second-half points), they hit their free throws (4-of-4) in the final minute and essentially did everything right late, except for that one play that we’ll get to more in a bit.
With no timeouts remaining and facing a four-point deficit with 27 seconds on the clock, Marcus Smart pushed the ball off two made free throws and made a floater to trim the lead yet again to two. The Pacers responded with two more makes at the line, so the Celtics knew they were running out of time to make it a one-possession game with less than 19 seconds remaining in regulation. They needed a 3-pointer to give themselves a chance to have a chance, so they calmly ran a great set that was called out from the sidelines. Horford set a great pindown screen for Irving who buried another trey at the top of the key, his 30th point of the night.
After the game, Irving credited the coaching staff for keeping the Celtics prepared for these type of situations with no timeouts to rely on.
“Just unwavering belief and it echoing down from our coaching staff to all of us,” he said. “We've been in some tough games this year, but being in a situation like that is not ideal. But when you are, we feel pretty confident about guys we can go to and also have one of the best coaches at (after-timeout situations) and drawing up plays with misdirection that can get you a great look. You feel pretty confident as well, so we don't want to be in that position, but we were. We fought to the end.”
That brings us to the game-changing play. Nate McMillan called timeout to advance the ball to halfcourt, while Stevens subbed in a small-ball lineup of Rozier, Shane Larkin, Irving, Smart and Horford. The instructions from the head coach were clear as the C’s attempted to force a steal for the third straight inbounds by the Pacers.
“You trap once with nine (seconds), but then you want to foul,” he explained after the game. “You just want to foul, and when it went into Joseph after he held it for a second, I think fouling is the most logical outcome. But logic doesn’t always work, so I’m glad we didn’t foul.”
The Celtics actually tried to execute that plan initially as Irving and Smart swarmed Cory Joseph on the sidelines after the inbounds. You can actually see Smart looked perplexed with the official after Irving isn’t whistled for a foul. Joseph wisely got rid of the ball to Bojan Bogdanovic (the inbounder) which left Larkin (defending Oladipo at mid-court) with a tough decision as the clock wound down. Does he try to foul right away after rotating to Bogdanovic or force another pass?
TERRY ROZIER WITH THE GAME-WINNING STEAL-AND-SLAM!!! pic.twitter.com/j0xwqLih3f
— Taylor Snow (@taylorcsnow) December 19, 2017