With 3:12 left in the third quarter, the Sacramento Kings led the Boston Celtics 84-78. The Kings had outscored Boston 62-42 from the start of the second quarter until that point of the game. The Celtics were listless, they were losing guys all over the floor defensively, and they let the officials get into their heads. The building was quiet enough to make a librarian happy.
And then human smelling salts Payton Pritchard and Luke Kornet checked in.
The crowd was jolted to life. The entire building was suddenly invested again.
“It was cool to just be a part of,” Joe Mazzulla said after the win. He’d never seen an arena change gears with a check-in either.
Jayson Tatum hit a pair of free throws, beginning an improbable run that brought them from down six to up 10 in a blink. Five quick points from Pritchard, a lob to Kornett channeling his inner Robert Williams, and Tatum hitting a couple of tough shot were just the beginning. The onslaught carried into the fourth quarter, and by the time the counting was over, the Celtics had pulled off a 39-6 run over about 11 minutes of basketball.
“It’s honestly a great feeling,” Kornet said. “I feel like that group we had out there, we were all just trying to figure it out together, and it’s nice when you can kind of get lost in that. … That’s what I really enjoy about playing, when you’re all together and trying to figure everything out and you don’t worry about much else.”
The G forces associated with turns as drastic as the one the Celtics made have been known to cause blackouts, which might explain why the Kings melted down the way they did. Suddenly, the Celtics were throwing fresh legs and a different defense at the vaunted Kings offense, and they couldn't handle it.
“We changed coverages a little bit, which gave them a different look,” Mazzulla said. “When we went with Luke, we were able to kind of go to more of our traditional defense and our guys were able to be more physical and get into the ball and have rim protection. … We took away about 34, 35 percent of their 3s and so I thought that was huge for us.”
But more than changes to confuse the Kings, it was, to borrow a phrase from Jaylen Brown, an energy shift that swung things Boston’s way.
“Payton is a fan favorite, so when he got in the game, you felt that energy. That's all we needed,” Brown said “He came out and played hard. He made some big-time baskets, which I said before is really hard to do in this league. Just come off and be like a microwave like that. I think that's one of the hardest things to do in this league. Payton almost seems like he's mastering it.”
This is a team that will mostly go as far as Brown and Tatum take it, but every once in a while, they need help too.
"That's why you have a team,” Tatum said. “You substitute guys and Payton hasn't played all night and he's fresh. Comes and picks the energy up, Luke gets a couple of blocks, now we are running in transition. We hit a three and we feel better about ourselves. And the crowd starts feeding off that. You know, the crowd, they know basketball, they can sense what's going on. You know, just one, score one stop after another. And we just try to run with it."
They didn't just run with it, they were Usain Bolt in high tops out there. They were E. Honda in Street Fighter II hundred-hand slapping the Kings into submission.
And it all started with a simple substitution. Pritchard was the smallest guy on the floor, but his mere entry into the game had maybe the biggest impact on how the game changed. As the run grew from 8-0 to 14-0 to end the third quarter, each cheer from the crowd grew exponentially, especially when Pritchard was the one extending the lead.
“I love it,” he said. “I know they love me here and I love that about Boston. I definitely appreciate it.”