Sometimes, when a player dispenses with the postgame interview playbook and shoots from the hip, you can actually learn a lot about him or his team.
After Boston’s 116-110 win in Toronto, Jayson Tatum stood on the floor with Abby Chin and answered a question about what he learned about his team after their big third quarter to take control of the game.
What he said might be one of the more enlightening things he’s said as a Celtic.
“When we put our minds to it, we can beat anybody, and it's just ... it’s a choice that we got to make,” he said. “We can make any excuse -- we had two guys out. Four guys out, actually, second night of a back-to-back, we could have just chalked this one up. But we wanted to figure it out. We got a bigger goal in mind. It's one game at a time, but these are the steps you got to take to get there.”
There's so much wrapped up in that little quote.
“It’s a choice that we got to make.”
Tatum’s Celtics can certainly be accused of making poor choices when it comes to closing out games. I know I’ve written many words about effort and desire; of the hard work it takes to do things the right way and not lean on bad habits or the ego-driven entrapments of wanting to do everything.
No team is going to be perfect over the course of a season. The Celtics haven't been, and they won’t be this season. There have been bad nights where the effort wanes and the legs aren’t there, and there will be more as the season rolls on. But the simple admission that the choice is theirs to make lets us know how aware they are of their circumstance.
“We could have just chalked this one up. But we wanted to figure it out.”
I’ll never forget when Tristan Thompson called the regular season “horse (expletive).” He and Kyrie Irving were, in my opinion, two of the worst influences on the habit-building of their respective teams.
Both came out of Cleveland with the misguided delusion that regular seasons didn’t matter at all. They did so because regular seasons don’t matter to LeBron James at all, and he was able to flip a switch and carry his teams to the Finals over and over again. Irving and Thompson thought that rule also applied to them. They were wrong.
With better influences around them, and the benefit of hindsight, this team now understands that NBA success is like growing a tulip. The bulbs have to be planted in November or December in order to bloom in the spring. Habits teams lean on after Easter start developing around Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The Celtics had a ready-made excuse sitting there for them. A waiter might as well have been walking around the locker room with an hors d'oeuvres plate, casually asking players “would you care for any excuses today? We have a wonderful ‘back-to-back’ here, and we also have a ‘Malcolm Brogdon and Al Horford are out’ that I recommend.” They could have taken them, caved to Toronto’s rangy, switchy defenders, given the media the same ol’ same ol’ about watching film and getting better, and enjoyed a golf day in Phoenix.
They didn’t take the easy way out. They looked inward and made a choice.
“We got a bigger goal in mind. It's one game at a time, but these are the steps you got to take to get there.”
I’ll never forget the look on Tatum’s face after Game 6 of the Finals. I’ve written and talked about it a lot, but the depth of his pain stuck out to me in that moment.
Obviously, everyone was lingering between some state of sad and pissed off on that night. They knew the opportunity they’d lost.
But Tatum looked despondent. His attitude can come off as very casual, but there is a fierce competitor underneath the measured media responses. I believe him when he says he never wants to feel like that again. I think that's part of what showed up in the third quarter when he stopped playing the tired brand of basketball that led to that feeling in the first place and started playing like the guy squarely in the MVP discussion this season.
The Celtics looked like a team that collectively made that choice. They knew this game meant something to a Raptors team hoping to use this as a measuring stick game. Who knows what a win would have meant to the middling Raptors as they try to find their identity. They could still emerge as a playoff opponent for the Celtics, and they would have loved to announce themselves as a threat should that ever come to pass.
Boston put those thoughts to bed after halftime, instead announcing that they, too, wanted to prove something in Scotiabank Arena.
A team did measure itself against the Boston Celtics on Monday night: The Celtics themselves. They wanted to prove to themselves that they could choose the right path when the wrong path was lit and cleared for landing. The step they took with this win will pay off when the sun’s rays shine brighter and longer, on a day where 50 degrees will be welcome and warm. The step they took was an important one, and it makes this their best win of the season.