The Celtics led the Phoenix Suns by 45 at one point. That is a lead that some might find disrespectful, but Joe Mazzulla disagrees.
“I thought the way we played showed the respect we had for them by our detail in the scouting report, our effort and our execution,” he said.
Through three quarters, the Celtics played with a level of focus that they haven't really displayed, at least not to that level and not for that long, all season. They showed up ready to play the best team in the West, they took their initial punch, and fired back.
Boston took the challenge of facing the Suns seriously, and it showed. When Chris Paul came out slinging, the Celtics stayed afloat. The Suns held a 16-13 lead with 5:09 to go in the first quarter of what looked like a slugfest. Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown were a combined 1-9 at that point, but Grant Williams took advantage of the attention they were getting to find his own openings.
But for Mazzulla’s Celtics, there is always ballast. Sure, Boston played well as a team and built a big lead, but the Suns were also 1-13 on 3-pointers. A lot of those were just flat out cold shooting.
“We gave up a lot of shots wide open tonight,” Mazzulla said after the game. “And if those would have went in and could have been a different game. So there's a lot of possessions that went our way that may not go our way. And so we have to learn from those.”
Mazzulla takes the old Brad Stevens mantra of ‘not too high, not too low’ to extreme levels, but it’s paying off for the Celtics. They are slowly becoming the embodiment of their coach, buying into his mentality and taking their game to another level because of it.
“Everybody in that locker room understands what we're trying to do,” Tatum said. “We’re 21-5, and with that comes the decision every night to play the right way, play as hard as we can on both ends. … we’re having a lot of fun, but I think the goal is still the same: get back to the finals and get over that hump.”
Mazzulla’s sandcastle analogy shows up more and more as the season progresses. It’s a notion that no matter how great a sandcastle you build, the tide will wash it away at some point, so tomorrow you’ll have to put in the work to do it all over again. Tatum has twice now talked about the choice being made by this team on a daily basis to be who they are. He has referenced the loss to Golden State many times, and the perspective of that, plus the lingering emotional damage it inflicted, seems to permeate this team.
And so the Celtics took their good fortune in the second quarter and ran with it. They turned up their defense and rattled off steal after steal, using four of them to build a massive lead in the second quarter. They used two more from Marcus Smart in the third to send the message to Monty Williams that there would be no let up from the visitors, so he might as well get his bench some minutes.
“I think defensively we’re starting to get back to ourselves, being able to lock teams up, suffocate teams, and tonight that showed,” Brown said. “Our defense led to offense and we were able to get some good baskets going and we put some pressure on them. So we got to keep it going on the defensive side of the ball.”
The story of this game could easily be the “uh oh” feeling that might start coursing through the league as they look at the rankings and see Boston’s defense has now crept into the top 10. It’s a scary prospect for the rest of the NBA to think the Celtics are not only climbing the defensive rankings but are also near the return of their defensive anchor, Robert Williams.
But Mazzulla doesn’t care about the number, necessarily. He cares about why the number is what it is, and how they're doing it.
“You can enjoy a moment like this, but you got to understand why you did it,” Mazzulla said. “You got to understand how you can get better and then, it's a long year, and this could happen to us, it could not. We're gonna go through some type of obstacle throughout the year. We just got to be ready for it and handle it together.”
The attitude on this team feels different. The Finals loss, the coaching mess, the maturity that comes with age as the team’s stars grow -- it’s all part of where they are now. But tying that all together is Mazzulla’s mindset. Emotion gives way to reason, and, even in the light of the utter demolition of an elite opponent, perspective reigns.
“We're having fun and we’re happy with the way we’re playing, but nobody in that locker room is celebrating or satisfied with where we’re at,” Tatum said. “None of this means anything if we don't hang a banner. So that's the ultimate goal.”