It was happening again.
Boston took a 102-91 lead, one point shy of their biggest lead of the game, with a little less than five minutes remaining. The Celtics had been trading runs with the Charlotte Hornets all night long, but this was a point where it should have stopped. It was the point where Boston should have put the game away.
Instead, Terry Rozier made a layup a minute later to make it 102-93.
Then LaMelo Ball hit a couple of free throws to make it 102-95. Boston had missed three shots and turned it over once in that span.
Uh oh.
Josh Richardson made one of two free throws, but it had been 1:37 without a made basket for Boston. Yikes.
Rozier hit a 3, then Richardson missed. Then Jayson Tatum turned the ball over. And fouled Ball. And got a tech. Three free throws for Charlotte.
Swish. Swish. Swish.
103-101. 10-1 Hornets run. Three full minutes without a bucket for Boston. Less than two minutes on the clock.
Oh. My. God.
The Celtics were imploding again. I said “wow” out loud to myself about four different times during this stretch, partly in disbelief that I was watching it happen again, and partly wondering how the hell I was going to write about another one of these.
And then …
Clutch bucket Jaylen Brown! pic.twitter.com/0rB5EeiCCw
— Celtics on NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSCeltics) February 3, 2022
Boston wasn’t out of the woods yet, but they had a pulse, which is more than could be said for them in these games earlier this season. The Hornets hit a 3, but the Celtics didn’t try to just come down and answer it. They actually ran an offense.
THEY RAN AN OFFENSE!
A pin-down screen for Tatum, who ran a ghost screen off Marcus Smart (who was actually running the point) looking for the ball. But Smart saw a driving lane and took it. He drew the foul, and hit both free throws.
Charlotte hit another 3, but again, Boston didn't come down and jack one up trying to get it back. They put the ball in Smart’s hands again to start, ran a pick-and-roll, and Tatum attacked the basket, drawing a foul and hitting both free throws.
“We made the right play at the right time, we got the ball to the right guy at the right time in the right spots,” Smart said. “On the defensive end, we didn’t have those lapses that we probably used to have when the game started to get a little close.”
With Boston up two, Robert Williams made sure to end the back-and-forth, making a special defensive play by blocking PJ Washington’s 3-pointer and then later sealing the game with a dunk.
“It feels nice. Seeing us be able to execute when things got tight,” Josh Richardson said. “I think we’ve got to do a little better on defense down the stretch. I know I missed a couple of assignments so I’ve gotta be better. Just seeing us kind of turn that narrative around is good, so hopefully we can continue that.”
They started to do that with this win. Guys did little things throughout the fourth quarter to keep the Hornets' run from getting completely out of hand. Jaylen Brown shook off a tough night overall to make some key plays, including taking a charge.
“JB taking a charge today, you know that's rare territory we're in. We love that,” Richardson said with a laugh. “Like I said, getting out their comfort zone. Being ready to help their teammates, playing on a string, that's important if we want to compete."
We still don’t know what to make of this team. Fans are on edge, waiting on the old Celtics to show up. Nothing is fixed because of a nice run of wins against teams you’re supposed to beat.
But the Celtics haven't been able to even do that much for most of the season. So now that we’re seeing something a little different, we don’t want to trust it. We shouldn’t trust it. Not yet, anyway.
It’s up to the team to earn that back. And they start with games like tonight, when the same old story actually isn’t the same old story anymore. They change the narrative by changing the ending, because how the story ends changes how the setup is perceived. Instead of being the team that collapses, they can be the team that holds off late runs by desperate opponents.
And they change the ending by applying the lessons they picked up along the way.
“You just keep your composure. You calm everybody down and make sure we get the greatest shot that we can,” Smart said. “You don’t try to do it alone. You just take what the game gives you and it’s part of it. Guys go on runs. They did a good job of executing and we did a great job of executing back. So that’s part of the game and that’s what it’s going to take every night.”
If we weren’t so riddled with sports PTSD, we might bring ourselves to admit they could be figuring things out, and that with full health and normal roles, this is a team that is better than it has been. Their point differential (+3.5, third-best in the East) and net rating (+3.4, seventh-best in the NBA) have suggested a turnaround was coming.
On a night where Tatum and Brown were a little less than their normal selves, and their fourth-quarter lead fizzled away again, the Celtics figured out how to beat a decent team. No one is throwing a parade for them over this, but it sure does start to soften the edges around here.
“We’ve been in enough close games to where we’ve seen it go the other way,” Ime Udoka said. “We feel like we’ve hit a stretch where we get the shots we want, get the right looks and then buckle down on defense and make the right plays. That’s a sign of growth, and we’ll take it obviously. We’ve been on the other end.”