It had not been the prettiest stretch of crunch time for Kyrie Irving entering the final 10 seconds of Friday’s thriller against the Pacers. The All-Star point guard had missed one tough baseline fadeaway two possessions earlier and had been stripped (probably on a foul) by Wesley Matthews on the previous possession, which led to a turnover. The Pacers have one of the toughest defenses in the league even without Victor Oladipo and they have the length and speed to make life tough for guards in the halfcourt.
So with the game and any chance at homecourt advantage in the first round on the line (the Celtics weren’t going to close a two-game gap in standings with their closing schedule if they lost on Friday) Brad Stevens got creative with the final play of the game, notching the first win of a chess match that will go on between these two clubs over the next few weeks. Given how inconsistent the C’s bottom half of the roster has been all year long, Boston is going to need the coaching checkbox to be strongly in their favor on all postseason. Friday night was a promising sign on that front amid a tough year for Stevens.
A closer look at a few maneuvers that paid off big down the stretch for the head coach as the Celtics squeaked out a 114-112 victory.
1. Stevens goes full-court inbound for ATO game winner: With 10 seconds remaining and the Celtics clearly holding for one final shot in a tie game, the head coach got a bit unorthodox. Instead of advancing the ball past halfcourt (the usual option after a timeout), Stevens opted for a full-court attack with the final 10 seconds. The move was a calculated one, anticipating the pressure that Irving was bound to face from a Pacers double team that was likely to come. Instead, the alignment helped Boston avoid this pressure with Gordon Hayward inbounding the ball to a wide open Al Horford. He brought the ball up the floor and was able to get the ball to Irving with five seconds remaining, which gave Irving plenty of time to attack.
“Sometimes in the half court against really physical teams like this it’s hard to even get the ball in bounds, especially if they know you’re going to hold it for eight seconds,” Stevens explained. “So, you know, we wanted to use the whole court. It was supposed to go to Kyrie (Irving) off the inbound; they doubled him. So Al got the inbound and took it the length of the floor, which is fine, and then he found Kyrie when we just wanted to give him space on that side of the floor.”
“They did a good job, the possession before, defending and getting their hands and getting a steal there towards the end,” Horford added. “Coach kinda -- I guess he was probably trying to probably spread the floor a little more and giving Kyrie space to work.”
Kyrie Irving puts the Celtics up by 2 with 0.5 second left pic.twitter.com/c445dvBkLv
— The Render (@TheRenderNBA) March 30, 2019