BROOKLYN, NY -- Jayson Tatum stood at the free throw line with 17 seconds to go and Nets fans starting to file out of the Barclays Center. The Celtics fans in the house were in no such hurry to leave. Instead, they started to chant for him.
“Let’s go Celtics,” Tatum said afterward when asked if he heard what they were cheering. Some told him they were actually MVP chants.
“I know,” he said with a wink.
Tatum’s free throws sealed the game, but a late dunk capped his 39-point night, 14 of which came in the fourth. He and Jaylen Brown slammed the door on a Nets team now reeling from three fourth-quarter haymakers from Boston in this series.
That's three more than anyone expected a Boston team with a poor clutch track record to throw. One of the biggest questions heading into this series was how these guys would respond to the inevitable stack of clutch situations.
Turns out, they responded pretty well.
“Just playing basketball,” Brown said after the Game 3 win. “You get some matchups and try to be aggressive and take advantage of it, let the game come to you. A little bit sometimes just being patient, sometimes a little too patient, but everything always falls right into place when you play the game the right way.”
The Celtics are shooting 60% in clutch situations over this series. The sample size is small, just seven minutes over the three games, but they only have one turnover in those spots.
It’s a far cry from where they were, even late in the season after they made their run to the top of the standings. They had an opportunity to knock off the top-seed Miami Heat and fell short, giving up an 11-2 run to the Heat to close the game. Afterward, they swore that was what they needed at the time.
“We know what we’ve been doing, and we know who we are, and this is good for our team,” Al Horford said after that game. “There are some things that we have to adjust, there’s things we have to see, and I just think it’s just going to make us better.”
Ime Udoka called that loss a good playoff test. The Celtics failed that night, but learned a valuable lesson.
“I said it when we had the Dallas and Miami losses - two close ones. When they really went after Jayson and we didn’t make them pay for blitzing him,” Udoka said after beating the Nets. “Going forward it will be beneficial for us. They’re not all 20-point wins. In the playoffs you’re going to be in some tight games. That’s beneficial, but more so than that it’s learning from those early season losses. Tightened up our playbook, relearned the players and what we’re asking of them. All that’s come to fruition with how we’re playing now.”
Boston nearly choked away Game 1 but stole the win thanks to a great defensive stop and a last-second layup from Tatum. They used a 29-17 fourth quarter to come back from a 17-point deficit in Game 2 and run away with their second win. And in Game 3, they went from up 3 to up 15 in a matter of minutes, taking their biggest lead of the night late with only a few minutes left in the game.
“I think the ones late in the season and the ones at the beginning of the season, when we were having big leads and blowing them like that, it was tough to deal with at the time but I always said it was gonna make us stronger,” Tatum said. “I think a big growth of our team is our mental toughness and how we respond to runs and I think we’ve been doing a good job of that.”
The best part of Boston’s new clutch performances is that they're doing it in a variety of ways. In Game 1, the buckets came off great passing. In Game 2, the ball was finding role players. In Game 3, Tatum and Brown were lions picking out injured gazelles for dinner, finding Brooklyn’s weakest defenders and hurting their feelings.
Brown is fifth in fourth-quarter total points so far in the playoffs with 28. Tatum is right behind him with 25. Kevin Durant has 15 on 27.3% shooting. In Game 3, he and Kyrie Irving combined for six points in the final quarter.
“Just trusting each other, just executing the game plan, trying to make it tough for those guys,” Brown said. “Those guys are the best players in the world, so just trying to keep them on their toes and live with the results. We just gotta keep going, because very easily those guys could still get it going next game or any game after, so we just want to come out, execute and live with the results, and play good basketball on offense and defense.”
Defense is the common thread. They have flexed their defensive chops in this series in a big way. There are no more “we want Boston” chants in the Barclays Center. The way Boston defending, there won’t be any more chants there after Monday.
“Down the stretch winning plays matter,” Brown said. “It’s not about just making shots, it’s about the box outs, it’s about making the right play, it’s about switching up aggressively, all the little things that we might not have done earlier, I think we’re doing now. And those are important, those help you win games down the line. So just being aggressive on both sides of the ball, and that’s what matters. We play both sides, we’re playing offense and defense and being aggressive, so I think that’s been key to this series.”
