With the game on the line, the Boston Celtics once again got the ball into the hands of one their young pillars. Down two with 35 seconds on the clock, the ball swung to Jaylen Brown who hunched over, surveyed the defense, and embarked on yet another isolation foray, barely getting off a passable shot, letting another “should win” game flitter away into the soul-crushing ether.
No. Wait. Sorry. Force of habit.
Brown ran a beautiful pick-and-roll with Robert Williams, reading that Nikola Vucevic was playing up and that Jayson Tatum’s gravity in the corner had created a lane for Williams to roll. Brown delivered a pass on the money, almost creating a 3-point play opportunity.
“They were switching a lot of guard to guard, and obviously Rob being a rim threat and them struggling somewhat to defend the rollers behind them, we knew that was something we could take advantage of,” Ime Udoka said. “We wanted to get more movement, playing through him at the top and then obviously the pick-and-rolls, letting him go DHO and get guys downhill that way worked out for us.”
All of Williams’ baskets came off lobs. Four of them were alley-oop dunks. The last of them was actually the beginning of Boston’s closing run.
“Coach just said something,” Williams said. “We felt like they were pressuring our guards a lot, so he was telling me when your guards turn around the corner, get out, you should be open.”
Williams factored heavily throughout it all. He did the obvious things, but he also did the little things like getting back in transition to deter an Ayo Dosunmu drive and setting the pick (along with Josh Richardson, on an elevator doors play on the baseline) that sprung Brown for a clutch jumper to make it a two-point game.
But it was the free throws that finished it off. Williams, whose 68.3% from the line this season represents a career-high, calmly hit all four free throws he took in the last 31 seconds of the game.
The first one hit the front of the rim, then the back, then the glass, before falling in. Williams crouched and slapped the floor in celebration. The second was a tiny bit less dramatic, still catching the front of the rim, but the backspin did its job to softly let it fall through the net.
A shooter’s touch, as it were.
Williams was back at the line about 20 seconds later, but buoyed by the confidence of the first two falling, and the backing of his teammates, those two were swishes.
“Happy,” Williams said of making those clutch freebies. “Honestly man. Happy and thankful for my teammates and my coaches just talking me through it and telling me I got it.”
Al Horford said of that moment, “I just gave him confidence. And he was very poised. And those are big free throws, down two. Because at that point, we really needed them, especially the first two. And he hung in there, he made them, and that's just big. Shows a lot of growth on his end.”
This is the tough part of what’s happening with the Celtics, because in reality, fans don’t want to hear about tiny bits of growth on a pro sports team. They just want everything to be grown. Fans want to walk into the farmer’s market and pick out their fruits and vegetables, not wait in the fields to pick their own corn.
But the Celtics aren’t ready yet, and through all of their very obvious flaws that still exist, these little steps are still important. The fixing of the things we’ve all complained about starts with games like this; the games where a lot of the mistakes are made but they find a way to win.
Maybe things are only 1% better today than they were yesterday, but being 1% better is better than being 1% worse.
“We've been in a lot of tough games like this and the guys are growing from it and you can start to figure out what we want to do at the end of games, the shots we want to get,” Udoka said. “And to credit our guys, they got down a little bit, never hung their heads, continued to fight, and dug their way back out of it.”