BSJ Game Report: Celtics 143, Spurs 140 - Jayson Tatum joins Larry Bird in the history books

Everything you need to know about the Boston Celtics 143-140 overtime win over the San Antonio Spurs, with BSJ insight and analysis. 

Box Score

HEADLINES

Wow! That’s my immediate reaction. The Celtics and Spurs basically played three games here. The Celtics lost the first one by 32. They won the second one by 32. And then they won the third one by 3. It’s almost impossible to describe how this game flipped from so incredibly bad to so incredibly good. I feel sorry for whoever’s job that is!

... Oh ... 

Jayson Tatum was out of his mind. He tied Larry Bird’s single-game scoring record with 60 points, and is the only Celtic ever to have two 50+ point games in a single season. He lived at the rim, took 17 free throws (making 15) and hit 54% of his shots (5-7 from 3). 

“JT really was outstanding tonight. You have to tip your cap,” Jaylen Brown said. “That boy was destined for greatness. I couldn’t throw a rock into the ocean tonight and JT carried us to a win, man. He played hard. He led us tonight. There’s other nights where it’s going to be other ways, but tonight JT was outstanding.”

Oh, about that first half. “To be candid, I was pissed, disappointed,” Brad Stevens said about the early deficit. “We can't be like that and I've said all the time, it's easy to play from behind. It's really hard to hold a lead in this league. There's nothing more uncomfortable than being up big early in the game.” The Celtics were down 32 at one point. It’s almost as if they were testing the tensile strength of their ability to get down big and make a comeback. 

TURNING POINT

Evan Fournier, who had looked absolutely horrible to that point, hit his second 3-pointer of the third quarter to cut the San Antonio lead from 32 to 20. It was the first glimmer of something positive for the Celtics. Think of it as the moment Rocky made Drago bleed. 

TOP PLAY 

Jaylen Brown, who had been ice cold all game, drills the 3 to put Boston up 2 with 16.7 left.

https://twitter.com/celtics/status/1388325945845616640

FOUR (THREE) UP

Jaylen Brown*: He’s here strictly for hitting that shot.

“I knew I couldn’t miss forever,” he said afterward. “I have unwavering confidence, even though I shot a lot and I missed a lot, I knew these are shots I work on in practice every day regardless of what’s going on right now, the next one is going in. The next one is going in. And right on time, the shot fell ... but that shot, that was probably a big shot, mentally, in my career.” 

It’s easy to lose confidence in yourself on a night like Brown’s. He stuck with it and hit the biggest shot of the game.

Jayson Tatum: He attacked. He took 26 shots in the lane, 13 of them at the rim. That’s the kind of attacking he needs to continue. 



He also had 5 assists and the hockey assist on the Brown 3-pointer that sealed the game. He made the right play at the right time, and it paid off. 

https://twitter.com/celtics/status/1388331105015697411

Aaron Nesmith: Suddenly he’s turning into a cult hero in Boston thanks to his incredible hustle. For example, he missed a layup but then immediately dove for a loose ball, won the ensuing jump ball, and then tipped in a miss. His steal at the end of overtime essentially sealed Boston’s win. He also hit a couple of big 3-pointers. All of a sudden, something has snapped into place for him.

Robert Williams: He didn’t play a ton but he nearly got a double-double (10 points, 9 rebounds) in 23 minutes.

TWO DOWN

Jaylen Brown: The ellipses from that Brown quote earlier was this portion of the quote: “I know today was a shitty game. I know I needed to be a lot more poised and take care of the basketball.” 

That last shot needed to go in for Brown, because he was forcing it in the overtime, missing shots, and turning the ball over. The shot he hit came in the flow of the offense. 

Rough shooting nights happen. These balance out his unconscious shooting nights. But he’s a bit lucky that Boston pulled this out because the storyline could have easily been “Brown tries to do too much on a night Tatum was on fire.” 

Evan Fournier: He had that spurt in the third quarter that was clutch, but prior to that he was about as bad as I’ve ever seen. The post-COVID fogginess lifted at the right time, but there was a point in the game where I thought he needed to be pulled just for the sake of sparing him the embarrassment of how he was playing.

THREE TAKES KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER

The fans deserve some credit. The players are the ones who came back from down 32, but that’s impossible to do without a little extra adrenaline boost. 

“There’s no doubt that our fans played a big role in it, and we’re greatly appreciative of them for that,” Stevens said after the game. 

There’s making a run, and then there’s making a run with the huge pop from the crowd after a big play. There’s a real rush coming from the stands, even with just 12.5% capacity, to help carry a roll just a little further. 

“I’m not sure we would have been able to pull it off,” Tatum said. “I’ve been part of many games here where they got us over that hump, or gave us the boost, especially tonight, that we really needed.”

These guys have been through a lot, but this team is still together... Despite what the talking heads want to say, this comeback never happens without some strong cohesion. The start of the game is a problem, for sure, but teams that aren’t together, fall apart in games like this. 

“I'm proud of our resiliency, our resolve, our togetherness, our willingness to put aside whatever happened in the first half and all of the look that we had,” Stevens said. “It wasn't good. Again, that's why we got booed. But we've shown that we weren't gonna go away. I think that that's kind of the deal with this season, is we've said we knew it was going to start tough, we didn't know that we'd go through all that we've been through. We haven't played perfect, but we haven't played as bad as people have said and we have an opportunity to peak at the right time.”

...But they can’t let this comeback mask their issues.

“We’ll try to fix our play as well as we can, we’ll try to be as good as we can, but we can control our own mentality going into the game,” Stevens said.  “We can’t control whether they make shots or not all the time. Even with good defense at times in the first quarter they made every single shot. However, we can control our mentality. That’s an easy thing to talk about it, but it just has to be done. I’m not going to lose sleep over it, because it’s just a choice. Just choose to do it. So that’s what we have to do."

They cannot forget the start in this game. If anything this game is the ultimate lesson: play the right way, you win by 35. Play the wrong way, you lose by 32.