Joe Mazzulla took a timeout with 22.8 seconds left in the first half against the Sixers last week. Philadelphia was getting the ball out of bounds, which made this seem like an oddly-timed decision; one that had the broadcast crew confused.
Until, that is, they saw the green light.
“Oh. Ahhhh!” Brian Scalabrine said, stopping mid-sentence in realization. “Green light special!”
In Scal-ese, that means it’s a coach’s challenge.
“That means our boy Matt Reynolds is gonna get some air time right here,” he happily added.
“Matt Reynolds. The king of the green light! It’s Celtics ball,” said new Celtics road play-by-play man Drew Carter. “Shout to Matt Reynolds, the czar of the challenge.”
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That kind of banter has quickly become a thing on Celtics broadcasts, especially with Carter on the call over the past three games. But Reynolds isn’t just some advisor when it comes to the reviews. He has total authority. When Reynolds says challenge the call, Mazzulla challenges the call.
“If he tells me to do it, I’m always going to do it,” Mazzulla told Boston Sports Journal. “If he says it, I’m doing it a thousand percent of the time.”
Getting to that level of trust doesn’t just happen overnight. Reynolds and Mazzulla get together to watch the last three minutes of every close game around the NBA. They study everything about those late-game situations, including every challengeable call and why those calls were challenged by other coaches. So in addition to being the challenge guy, Reynolds is their situational basketball guy, which puts him in charge of late-game situations.
But Carter didn’t advise Reynolds to start wearing makeup for television because he’s good at helping the Celtics get out of late-game jams. This is all about the challenges, and there's a science to when those challenges are taken … especially with the new wrinkle this season that a successful challenge results in getting a second challenge to use later.
“First through third is out of bounds (calls), almost exclusively,” Mazzulla said of his challenge strategy. Those calls are much more likely to be overturned because it’s easier for refs to miss and there's no nuance to it. The ball touched someone last, and the other team gets the ball.
“Fouls, you gotta be pretty sure about it just because sometimes you don't see contact that the refs saw, whether it was body contact, or a hand on somebody's hip that wasn't on the TV, the angle that you have,” Reynolds told BSJ.
Reynolds says he might have five to 10 seconds to challenge an out-of-bounds call, and maybe up to 20 to challenge a foul depending on whether there's a delay for a fallen player to get up and wait for the floor to be wiped. It’s not a lot of time, and he’s dependent on a replay coming from someone else, and even then he doesn’t always have all the angles the referees get in reviewing a call. That means what looks like a clear challenge when he makes the call could be much less of one when another angle shows up.
“It’s stressful,” Reynolds admitted. “In that two-minute stretch between when we challenge and when it gets announced in the arena. Twenty seconds later, I may see the angle and I’m like ‘we're gonna lose that.’ And that's like, my heart's pounding just like, I know, we're gonna lose, it’s just like a matter of time. We're just waiting. Yeah, that sucks.”
That might earn Reynolds a little ribbing from Mazzulla, but that's also probably going to happen regardless because that's the relationship they have. They both, if I might steal a phrase from another NBA franchise, trust the process of challenging calls that they understand the risks.
And that's why they save the big swings for later in the game. Unless there's a blatantly obvious foul call to challenge earlier, the Celtics will choose to save their green light specials for the more obvious calls. They also want to make sure they don’t cost themselves later in the game for when a changed call is more impactful.
“There's still timeout consideration,” Reynolds said. “Whose mandatory (timeout is it)? Are we going to put ourselves behind for later in the game? And that goes back to the last three minutes of all the close games. How many timeouts do you have in those moments? So making sure that you set yourself up, you're allowed a max of two. So trying to get to those two under three is important.”
Fellow assistant DJ MacLeay is also in on the challenges, in part because he’s louder than Reynolds and someone’s voice needs to cut through the crowd noise. But just like everything on a basketball team, this is also a collaborative process. Reynolds has the final call, but there's other input.
Sometimes that comes from players, too. A thunderstruck player twirling his finger after being whistled for a foul is not uncommon, but the players understand that Reynolds is on their side.
“I think we've established a little credibility where there's an understanding,” Reynolds said. “We're thinking about it all the time … we're looking to rectify a missed call. … It's not something that you want players to have to think about because there's always so much other stuff going on in the course of the game.”
Mazzulla might go rogue every once in a while and challenge something without Reynolds’ input. Building trust and relationships with players means sometimes having their back even if the challenge isn’t rock-solid. Sometimes, like the challenge of Oshae Brissett’s monster dunk in the first preseason game, the goal is to challenge the refs to make a 50/50 call when a win would put points on the board for Boston and prevent free throws for the opponent. There's a little bit of art mixed into the science.
And for now, there's a little bit of fun mixed in as well. Reynolds is from Lexington, so his family gets to see all the games, and all the attention he’s been getting for being the only non-Bruin in the building to light a lamp.
“It’s cool hearing from my family and stuff,” Reynolds said. “Preseason, have a little fun … My sister and my mom are on a group text with me about it. That’s pretty cool.”