MIAMI — Jayson Tatum sat down in front of the assembled media at the Kaseya Center, rubbed his face, and looked out into the crowd with a look you don’t often see on the face of perhaps the most composed player in the league.
“I'm still, like, in disbelief,” he said in the middle of describing the game-winning play that extended the Eastern Conference Finals to a seventh game. “That shit was crazy.”
I think everyone on either side of this game can agree with that sentiment. No one in the building on Saturday night could fully process what had happened, even though by the time Tatum sat down, more than an hour had passed between Derrick White’s putback being ruled good and Tatum sitting down trying to explain the moment.
“I didn't have time to think like, 'Oh, shit the season might be over,'” he said. “It was like, 'No, we've got three seconds left, we try and make a play.' Whatever happened just happened.
“Nobody was sitting there pouting like, 'Oh, we blew it.' No, we've got three seconds left. Joe drew up a play. We tried to execute it to the best of our ability and try to make something happen.”
Jaylen Brown summed it up more succinctly: “At that point, I’m in full prayer mode.”
A lot had to go wrong for the basketball gods to deliver this good fortune. The Celtics had to blow a nine-point lead in the final few minutes of the game. They had to miss 14 of 20 fourth-quarter shots. They had to foul Jimmy Butler on a 3-point attempt and give him three free throws to take the lead. And then they had to inbound to a third option just to get a shot up.
Oh, and they had to lose Game 4 of the semifinals to the Sixers.
“I just wanted to give our team and myself enough time to be able to give us a chance to hopefully get a second chance if we missed,” Smart said of his shot. “Learned that from the Philly game, the Philly series, we didn't get a shot off. And they did a good job of taking away JT, and Derrick and me and everybody else did a good job of just reacting and going to make a play.”
Miami and Philadelphia fans can now commiserate over crushing Game 6 losses at home in games that Boston seemed to have no business winning. Smart was pretty close to following in Tatum’s footsteps to beat the home team with 3-point shooting, but Smart’s shot was a fraction of an inch off. But that fraction was the exact amount of “off” it needed to be for White to swoop in from the left corner, catch the rebound in the absolute perfect spot, and win the game.
“Obviously, you have to have some luck on your side,” Joe Mazzulla said. “They missed some open shots. We missed some open shots. But you've just got to stay in the fight and make the next best play you can, and I thought each guy on the team did that.”
When the replay flashed on the scoreboard, everyone saw White’s tip-in was good. The Celtics celebrated on the floor and into the locker room. After the postgame speeches, Tatum and Brown both stood there and shared a moment, both still unsure how they still had basketball to play, but also happy they did.
We’ve got #UnfinishedBusiness to take care of pic.twitter.com/1Hjl2sUm1b
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) May 28, 2023
The reality for Boston is they earned White’s tip in. For all the mistakes they made, they showed fight throughout the game. They grabbed six offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter alone. They defended and made things tough on Miami. They took the punch with just a few seconds left and they just found a way to pull it out at the absolute last possible second.
“So many emotions, so many feelings. I just felt like, the whole time, our will, we just believed that we were going to get it done,” Al Horford said. “I don’t know, we didn't know how it was gonna be. A lot to learn from this game but just taking that moment and being in that time. And D-White having that poise, it's unbelievable. I've never been a part of a game like this.”
Now this Boston run has its special, signature moment. Until now, these playoffs have been more frustrating than anything. The Atlanta series was annoying. Going 7 against Philadelphia felt unnecessary. Going down 3-0 against Miami felt like punishment was being doled out to a team that wasn’t mature enough to get the job done.
Suddenly, all of that just feels like the ultimate challenge. This group had to overcome their greatest opponent, themselves, and finally find a way to win a game where no one could hit a 3-pointer.
“Getting down 3-0, it really turned a lot of people against us in the outside world that was with us, and we felt that,” Smart said. “And we just, we came together and decided to stay the course. The guys that are in this locker room, these are the guys we need to lean on and nobody else, because nobody understands what we're going through. Nobody's been here before. Nobody's doing what we're doing. So just keep going and continue to trust one another.”
They put themselves in the worst possible situation, and now they're fixing it because they got back to the things that have always worked. They are defending, they are passing, and they are working harder than the other team. The effort is finally starting to match the talent, and it has put them on the doorstep of a place that didn't seem possible.
One more win, just 48 more minutes of figuring it out, and the Celtics can head back to the Finals. There's magic in the air now. They just need to finish the job.
“I've never been so excited to go back to Boston in my life,” Tatum said. “I cannot wait to see all the fans on Monday because it's going to be fun.”