Sometimes breaking old basketball habits is harder than trying to explain the witness relocation program to Homer Simpson.
For an insufferable amount of time thanks to choppy officiating, drawn-out reviews, and the general disappearing of heads into rectal cavities, the new-and-improved Celtics looked like the old-and-less-good version of years past.
I don’t think they're going back to the old basketball recipe here. This isn’t a situation where we’re trying to decipher whether the early success has been fraudulent. I think it’s been actual, real success.
But I do think that it’s a good thing to have this game serve as a gentle reminder to the boys that NBA success is fleeting; that talent is fine but talent plus crisp execution is going to be necessary to win on most nights. Especially when they're going up against a team with a star as big as anyone in green.
The Celtics had plenty of chances to win this game much earlier than the fourth quarter. They let Naz Reid get too comfortable in the first quarter and he helped the Wolves close it out on a 17-9 run to take a lead. They played their worst quarter of the season in the third, scoring just 19 points on 26% shooting, missing a chance to capitalize on Anthony Edwards sitting for nearly half the quarter with four fouls.
If they had made the most of those opportunities, this space would be full of words of praise for a team that enjoys more garbage time than a family of raccoons. But they didn’t.
But this is how things go in the NBA. Good opportunities slip through fingers some nights and they are seized the next. This team is still new. And frankly, they need moments like this to remind them of what to do when things go like this again.
Because timeouts aren’t always going to be there to bail you out.
When Jayson Tatum found himself in the middle of the paint, catching the ball with 2:17 left in a tie game, he made a read. It was the right one, but Jaylen Brown was in the wrong spot.
“We were trying to make the right play,” Tatum explained after the game. “I thought he was in the corner. He slid to the slot. I caught the ball in the paint. His man helped … Those are some of the things we got to clean up. Just knowing where guys are gonna be, and that's not like my fault or his fault, we just gotta get on the same page.”
The page should have told Brown to get deep into the corner (like Kristaps Porzingis was on the other side of the floor). Of course, the page also says Tatum shouldn’t have tripped over his own feet for a turnover earlier in the quarter, and Al Horford shouldn’t have done the same later with :33 on the clock. The page everyone should have been on should have told them to calm down a little because they had plenty of time.
Boston had the ball three times in the final minute with the game tied at 101. Two of those possessions were turnovers and the third was Jaylen Brown’s missed buzzer-beater. In overtime, the Celtics devolved into the worst version of themselves, with another bad turnover (Brown’s offensive foul) and poor shot selection out of isolation plays.
When you watch the best teams execute down the stretch, you see teams completely unaffected by the madness of the moment. What Boston needs to be in these situations is fully aware of how much time they really have while being patient enough to understand their options. They have to understand the difference between isolating Tatum and Brown and playing through Tatum and Brown.
And I think they do know that. They beat the Knicks and Heat in close games this season with good fourth-quarter execution, so this isn’t a foreign concept. They just have to remember.
They have to remember that posting up is a good option down the stretch. They have to remember that finding Porzingis is a good option down the stretch. It’s why they brought him here in the first place.
They didn’t remember, and Joe Mazzulla didn’t call a timeout to remind them about it either. I think he did it on purpose.
Because those guys on the floor should know just as well as any coach what the options are in any situation. They should be able to see or hear a play call and automatically understand what the coach wants. If this wasn’t Minnesota in early November, maybe he would have.
But that's what these games are for. The old habits need to go away, and now is the time to eradicate them. They showed themselves once again in Minnesota, but hopefully for one last visit.
The team has put a new roster together for a reason. If there's a lesson to be learned from this game, it's don't forget to use it.