Marcus Smart left the game with 12.8 seconds to go in overtime, mysteriously disappearing into the back but reappearing after a timeout.
“I actually had to vomit,” Smart said.
He wasn’t alone.
Celtics fans watching the team go from up 20 to down 13 in a matter of almost minutes were also feeling pretty queasy about things. What was looking like a nice, comfortable bounceback game suddenly turned into visual ipecac.
Boston was outscored by 31. They turned the ball over 10 times while only making six shots. They were 1-11 from 3 and 6-25 overall and spent nearly half that time not scoring at all.
The Celtics went up 20 and were out-scored 45-14. Joe Mazzulla did call a timeout somewhere in the middle of that mess, but he spent most of that time watching his team struggle.
“I just thought it was a good opportunity for our guys to grow,” he explained after the game. “We have to just learn how to get through it. And so our guys did a great job of building an awareness to why they went on the stretch. And most of the time in those situations, it's self-inflicted. And so if we can just clean those things up and execute, and we'll be able to handle being down five with 48 seconds left, knowing exactly what we're trying to do and execute. So it's a great mindset by the team to just stay poised.”
“Stay poised” is a stretch. Regain composure is even a little bit of a one-sided view of things when we consider the Lakers complicity in the turnaround after the turnaround.
Each team responded to its biggest lead of the game by immediately choking it away. The Celtics out-scored the Lakers by 16 over the final 4:26 and overtime. The Lakers missed 12 shots, all eight of their 3-point attempts, and three of four free throws. Russell Westbrook, who played a huge role in the Lakers resurgence, went 3-8 in that stretch, including a pair of 3-pointers. The Celtics stuck Luke Kornet on Westbrook and dared him to shoot.
“We really just wanted them to take the shots we wanted,” Smart said. “Human nature -- you see a big and you think that's an advantage and you forget everything that's kind of going on and you go away from what was working.”
Of course, Westbrook was the only Laker with anything left in the tank. The Lakers rode Anthony Davis the whole second half and overtime. LeBron James didn’t sit after the third quarter. The Lakers went all-in on trying to get what the Clippers and Warriors were able to pull off: Important wins at home against the best team in the NBA. The Lakers sold out for the chance to win in regulation, hoping the fumes would be enough to coast to the finish -- and that maybe the Celtics would help out by packing it in.
“They start playing really well. They got back into the game,” Jaylen Brown said. “We could have let it go. But we found a way to storm back, make some big plays down the stretch, and found a way to win that game. That just says a lot about our experience and our mental toughness.”
Before the game I wrote: “I also understand this one might be sloppy, but this is one of those ‘find a way’ games the Celtics should be winning. Jayson Tatum generally loves playing against the Lakers, so if he wakes up and does it himself, fine. If it's someone else, then fine. I do not care about the aesthetics of this game… just find a way.” I didn’t realize how much that idea would be put to the test.
But that's what the last few games have been about. The last three games of this trip have been a challenge to everyone; a challenge to the Celtics to navigate embarrassment and fatigue, a challenge to Mazzulla to find the line between playing through things and intervention, and a challenge to us to live up to the things we’ve built up in our heads.
The Celtics ended this trip 4-2, which is actually pretty good. We can banter about which games should have been losses, but ultimately, this trip ended with Boston doing what they needed to do. Any team winning 66% of their road games is going to be just fine in the league. We bemoan the loss to the Warriors because of the buildup and the loss to the Clippers because of the hangover, but profit is profit.
The Celtics had the Lakers handled and then relaxed too soon and nearly walked out of Los Angeles with their worst loss of the year. They basically dropped their phone down the stairs and watched it bounce all the way down in horror only to find the screen was still intact.
A team living out of a suitcase for 10 days, playing on a back-to-back and their third game in four nights won a gross game. They built their sandcastle. It’s not a pretty one, and they sat on half of it and had to salvage something before the tide came in, but they did it. Sometimes, that's all that matters.
