Sam Hauser slams the door on a fun finish after the Celtics hammered home an early point against Toronto

Any good horror or comedy writer will tell you the key to getting the reaction you want is delivering something unexpected. When you see something coming, you can be like the old lady at the Blue Jays game who didn’t flinch at the foul ball coming at her. 

But when something happens that you never expect … say, dunk by Sam Hauser, for example … then you might see a reaction like this. 

“When you don't do something very often, and when you do it, it's like, it gets everyone -- even when I see other people do things, it gets me excited,” said Hauser after the game as he laughed his way through the line of questioning. “I'm glad that they showed some emotion and it's cool to see them celebrating something I did.”

Not only something he did. THREE things he did. The first of which came after a loose ball found itself in Al Horford’s hands. Horford dribbled up the left side of the floor as Hauser hustled his way down the right side. Horford, as he is wont to do, made the perfect fundamental bounce pass to Hauser, who rose up and dunk it on Precious Achiuwa. 

Okay, it wasn’t so much on him as it was by him, but it was enough for Horford to feel the need to point at Achiuwa as if to say ‘that just happened to you!’

"I should have gotten a technical, probably. I was taunting,” Horford admitted to Boston Sports Journal after the game. He not only pointed, but also raised the roof in celebration down the floor. “He was determined, he got a dunk, I lost it. I really lost my composure at that point … I was so happy. I was so excited for him.” 

So was everyone else. Luke Kornett lost his mind on the sideline, running up and down the bench and into teammates like it was a mosh pit. Hauser threw down two more, with each one sending his teammates into deeper hysterics. Through the hugs and laughs, Robert Williams could be seen holding up three fingers, yelling “THAT’S THREE” after Hauser’s last slam. 

“We’ve just been waiting on him to do it,” Williams said to BSJ of Hauser’s throw downs. “We know he got hops, man. He brought us energy tonight.” 

The Hauser dunks were a just dessert for a Celtics team that had come out with a strong purpose in what appears to be their final tuneup before the playoffs. Sunday’s game might as well be played in Maine considering how few regulars will be on the floor. The Celtics are locked into the second seed and they can do nothing but wait until their eventual first round opponent comes out of the first play-in game on Tuesday night.

So they took this opportunity to demoralize and destroy a Raptors team in disarray. The Celtics made full use of their opportunity to fine tune their defense, create shots in transition, and move the ball in their half court sets. 

“I was paying attention to the mindset that we brought to start the game,” Joe Mazzulla said afterwards, downplaying the frivolity that highlighted the end of the game. “That's more important. We had no reason to be competitive and play the way we did other than it's the right thing to do. You can have fun after you do that.”

Sure, Mazzulla sounds like a parent telling a child “no dessert until you finish your vegetables,” but to their credit, the Celtics polished off their broccoli and brussel sprouts before digging into their ice cream. 

“It's good to have one of those games where kind of everything's clicking,” Hauser said. “Obviously there's still some things we can clean up with the turnovers, but when everything's clicking like that, and everyone's making shots, obviously things are fun. And you're getting stops on defense, that's always fun too. People are diving on the floor or offensive rebounding, that stuff's fun. And winning like that is really fun. So hopefully we can carry that over to Sunday and finish out the year on a high note.”

Hauser will certainly get some run on Sunday, and who knows, maybe a few more open lanes to the rim. As Payton Pritchard noted after the game, Hauser is 6’7” and should probably be dunking a little more often. Hauser, though, isn’t exactly warming up for any dunk contests.

“I just needed some space, you know? I gotta load up,” Hauser said, while admitting he hasn’t dunked this much in a game since high school. “I'm not as quick-twitch as other guys. I need a little bit of time to load up and take off. So I had some open ones tonight. It felt good. It felt good to get a couple of them tonight.”