BSJ Game Report: Celtics 120, Hornets 111- Tatum & Brown drop 73 in must-win game

Everything you need to know about the Celtics 120-111 win over the Hornets with BSJ insight and analysis:

Box Score

Celtics handle their business in a must-win situation. The Celtics' margin for error is gone, so they have to find any way they can to win these games. Ugly wins, easy wins, wins that should have been losses ... None of that matters. What matters is Atlanta lost and Boston won, so the Celtics are a game out of the fifth seed with nine games to play. 

The C’s right now are hoping to be that gazelle that gets tackled by a pride of lions but somehow someone gets sloppy and it escapes. That’s where we’re at. They took one step in that direction with this win.

Jaylen Brown backed up his talk. It was almost infuriating to hear Brown say the Celtics just couldn’t find the right energy in a game they really should have won last night. But he came out in the first quarter of this game and dropped 20 points on 8-11 shooting. 

“It motivates everybody,” Aaron Nesmith said after the game. “He's a really, really good player, and so when your best players come out, and they say something, and they back it up, it just makes everybody want to run with him, work with him. It makes everybody want to go out there and try as hard as they can because if he's out there busting his tail to make plays and why can't everybody else?"

TURNING POINT

The Hornets had cut the game down to four, but then Nesmith blocked Miles Bridges and Brad Wannamaker and soon after he answered a Terry Rozier 3-pointer with one of his own to trigger an 11-2 run that put too much distance between the two teams. 

TOP PLAY

I love this play because Nesmith had no clue what was coming and you can see Robert Williams kick it into another gear when he realized he’d have to do this himself:

https://twitter.com/celtics/status/1387566462374580225

FOUR UP 

Jaylen Brown: Brown got the team off to a big start, and then a big finish by scoring 12 in the fourth quarter. He combined with...

Jayson Tatum: He had 10 points in the 4th quarter and was perfect from the field. 

“That's part of the growth of great players and even beyond All-Stars, right?” Brad Stevens said after the game. “Guys that can take that next step that impact winning, that are great leaders, that are great players. In a lot of ways, that's a burden that great players carry. ... Those two guys, they came in and made it hard for us to be beat tonight.”

The best aspect of Tatum’s finish was the 3 assists in the fourth quarter. He’s close to joining the NBA’s elite, but he needs to tighten up his turnovers and make sure he punishes teams for double-teaming him. 

“As I see more and more attention and over-help and double teams, just being able to create for others and make it easier for the other guys on this team to get open looks is something I’m still working on,” Tatum said. “It’s definitely an area I’m focused on to get better and help myself and the team.”

Tatum and Brown combined for 73 points.

Tristan Thompson: He had 13 rebounds, 7 of which were offensive boards. His presence inside was especially big early in the game. Five of his offensive rebounds came in the first half. 

Aaron Nesmith: He’s the story of the game (so much so that I need to write about him separately). His energy was infectious, and he’s controlled himself to a point where he’s making plays instead of going too fast or being overzealous.  

“Aaron’s a guy who’s literally going to give his body up on every possession and run through a wall,” Tatum said. “He plays as hard as he can for as long as he’s out there, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. You need that from him and we appreciate it.”

TWO DOWN

Evan Fournier: He went 1-7 from the field tonight, making him 5-27 since his return from COVID-19. 

“He will not make this excuse, but he's dealing with some of the after-effects of it,” Stevens said. “He is feeling a little bit better wind-wise, but he's just a little foggy. He's talked about it openly. We've tried our best to help him, the way that we've been told that he can best get through it from everything they know is to continue to log minutes and log experience. He is frustrated by it for sure.”

He’s going to need some time to get to being himself.

Tremont Waters: He tried to thread a pass between defenders instead of making a simple swing pass, leading to a turnover that upset Brad Stevens so much that the air punch he threw after it knocked the mask off his face. 

Waters was actually good in the first quarter, so this isn’t an indictment of his overall game. The film will show good things earlier in the game, but the knock on Waters is that he is too loose with the ball and some of his passes will fly around the gym. That was evident late in the game. It’s nice that he has the confidence to throw some of those passes, and that confidence is what allows him to make some of the passes he makes, but he needs to understand his role and the situation, which he didn’t do late in the game. 

He was in there because Payton Pritchard had a bloody nose and it took a while to control it. The Celtics stopped their fourth quarter bleeding when Waters left the floor. 

ONE TAKE KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER

Nothing is fixed, but right now, who cares? Like I said earlier, this was a good win. Any win is a good win. Style points are out the window right now. Hell, even playing the right way is out the window if they win right now. 

This season has tipped to “play this certain way and you’ll win games” to “play however you need to to win games.”

Here’s why: If they can avoid the play-in tournament, they can have a week to prepare for their next series. They can rest. They can study. They can get “the right way” worked out in a stretch of practices that hasn’t existed since December. 

So do whatever you have to do, Celtics. Do you need to pull a Harlem Globetrottters and have Grant Williams pants a ref while Carsen Edwards throws confetti into the crowd? Fine. It doesn’t matter at this point. 

All that matters is wins at all costs. This game no longer matters. 100% of the focus is now on the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night and winning the game, even if it means holding Gregg Popovich’s favorite bottles of wine hostage to make it happen.