The Celtics needed this one.
They needed to beat the Philadelphia 76ers, a team that's been on an impressive run for a while, and bearing down on the Celtics in the standings. It was an important win to keep the Sixers at bay in the East and to give Boston a tighter grip on a potential tiebreaker.
But beyond that, they needed one of these feel-good types of wins.
They still have the league’s best record, but they haven't exactly been their old dominant selves for a while. Guys have been in slumps and their effort has been questioned. The coach has been second-guessed.
So when Blake Griffin started to bury 3-pointers early in the game, it started a series of events that, by the end of 48 minutes of NBA basketball, led to a prime candidate for best win of the season.
“I thought everybody that touched the floor tonight played well. It's really that simple,” Malcolm Brogdon said. “I think we go eight-nine deep, starters, top-level depth. On nights like tonight, that's when we can really prove how deep we are, how good our team is, how well-grounded we are.”
Boston’s stars weren’t themselves, and that put the onus on the rest of the team to step up if the Celtic were going to avoid embarrassment. The Celtics followed up Griffin’s early hot shooting with a stretch where Grant Williams scored eight of 11 Boston points. And the Brogdon took over to score seven of the next 11. It was a bucket brigade of a different kind.
“I think we go into situations like this with the utmost trust and comfortability because of our depth and the character of our guys,” Joe Mazzulla said. “And so Payton (Pritchard), Blake, the whole crew, you can always count on them. I thought Blake did a great job giving us presence and just giving us a lift at the beginning of the game. I thought Payton's defense at the end really helped us. And so when you have guys you can count on regardless, that's kind of a sign of a really good team.”
They are a really good team, but the question is whether they are good enough. The trade deadline is hours away and the movement around the league has already hit a fever pitch. Kyrie Irving is in Dallas and Kevin Durant is heading to Phoenix. Jakob Poeltl, to whom Boston was slightly connected in rumors, is going to Toronto.
Boston, meanwhile, is mulling whether to get involved in the frenzy. That means guys who played and contributed to this win could be on a flight out of town tomorrow. If it’s a goodbye for some of these players, then they gave themselves one they can be proud of. And if it’s a signal to the front office that no moves are needed, that they just needed to work through some slumps and all is good, then it was a perfectly timed one.
“You control what you can control. That’s the one thing I’ve learned in this league,” Grant Williams said. “You can’t control where you’ll be, what you’re doing, what your playing time is. You can only control how you react and how you approach every single day. And I think that’s what we have in this locker room: a bunch of guys who, no matter what’s going on around them, they do a great job of coming in with a great attitude and coming in with the right mentality of making not only the team better no matter if they’re going to be here or not. And we’re fortunate to have this group of guys. And I’m thankful. Hopefully we have these guys throughout the whole season, including myself.”
We look for these mile markers all throughout the season. We don’t know when they’ll show up, but you can kind of tell when they present themselves.
This definitely felt like one for the Celtics. They got great play from a supporting cast that has been up and down recently. They got a wonderfully coached game with personnel decisions that worked out well, play calls that took advantage of how they were being defended, a well-timed challenge, and even an out-of-bounds play that got Boston an alley-oop dunk with .5 seconds on the clock.
The trade deadline will pass and there will be some exhales in that Celtics locker room. There might also be some tough goodbyes and an empty locker when the Hornets visit on Friday. There are still injury issues to deal with, including Jaylen Brown’s fractured cheek, that will still make this a tough stretch for the Celtics.
But on this Wednesday night against a division rival, the Celtics took what looked to be a sure loss and got a top-to-bottom wonderful effort from everyone involved. They picked each other up, made huge plays, and rode through the rough patches with poise. They did everything they needed to do to win, and they picked up a win they very much needed.
