We’ve seen games like this a million times in the NBA. A bad team, scrappy and talented as they might be, gives a good team a big scare, the good team finds a way to win anyway, and everyone moves on.
What is there to take from this game? Did you see Boston’s second quarter? They were throwing balls into the stands like they were free t-shirts. They missed more shots than a Mormon during happy hour. They tried … like really tried … for 12 minutes in the third quarter, about half the fourth quarter, and then overtime.
They came out, they stunk, they won anyway. Flush it down the toilet and forget it ever happened, right?
“Why do we have nothing to gain from winning a basketball game?” Joe Mazzulla asked after the win. “We actually learned more from that game than we did, probably, playing the four games on the West Coast trip.”
Of course Mazzulla thinks that. Mazzulla actually should have two titles with the Boston Celtics: “Head Coach” and “Challenger of Whatever Preconceived Notions You Might Have.”
Good thing business cards are no longer really a thing.
“That's an opportunity to build a mindset and toughness,” Mazzulla said. “So to me, it's like we have everything to gain in this. And you talk about the in-season tournament creating something? How about the level of stress and pressure and anxiety that you felt in that arena today? Like, to me, we gained a ton from tonight's game. I thought it was an awesome opportunity.”
This is Mazzulla’s challenge this season. The number one thing every coach needs is players to buy in. It doesn’t even matter what the coach is selling his guys. If they're all bought in, there's going to be some level of success.
But what Mazzulla is selling doesn’t just challenge your or my conventional wisdom. It’s challenging everyone, including his players, to change how they think.
Some of it is working. Some of it is a work in progress.
“I saw a phrase and I really bought into it of ‘expect the expected,’” Mazzulla said. “I think everybody comes into a game like this and it's just like, ‘Oh, the Celtics are playing the Pistons, so they should win the game, and they're just going to win the game.’ And they look at the record, and they create this emotional mindset of like, ‘Oh, this is easy’ …
“So I think if you manage your expectations, it allows for you to execute and play with a free mind, and that's what I told the guys before shootaround. I was like, ‘You can't have any expectations to how you think this game is going to go, because we just have to be ready to adapt and do what's necessary to win the game.’”
On one hand, you can question how much of Mazzulla’s message is getting through because they still came out and stunk for most of the first 24 minutes. On the other, they didn’t let the first half bleed into the second. They did, in fact, adapt and do what was necessary to win the game.
If nothing else, Mazzulla has been able to pile up a bunch of evidence that supports his mindfulness approach. The Celtics did think this was going to be easy, which means they didn’t manage their expectations well, and they got stomped pretty good. At halftime, they adjusted their attitudes, whaddya know, they become the stompers rather than the stompees.
“I think we're all just a little bit, maybe a little bit, coming from that trip and maybe, as I said, a bit complacent how we're going to beat these guys,” Kristaps Porzingis admitted. “These games are tough and any team that's coming up against us, they want to show their level and it's just as I said, it's hard to play against a desperate team like they are. But yeah, it's a big contrast from the first to the second half and I'm just glad we got the job done.”
It’s a pretty simple message, really. Mazzulla has been very adamant about each game meaning just as much as the last, and the next, game on the schedule. This is a piece of pie divided up 82 ways, and no one piece is more or less delicious than the next.
That's not how you or I see things, but we have the luxury that players don’t. We can project our own emotions and expectations on these games all we want. We can believe one game is worth more than another and react accordingly.
The players don’t get to do that … or at least they shouldn’t in Mazzulla’s mind. His goal is to strip all that away from these games and get his team to take on the Pistons, Raptors, and Spurs the same way they’d face the Bucks, Sixers, and Nuggets.
Each game is played on the same court between teams of players good enough to be employed by the greatest basketball league on the planet. Once the ball is in the air, each game will present a new challenge that will require a new approach. An overtime win over the Pistons has no real bearing, aside from carried over fatigue or injuries, on the next games on the schedule. There is also no transitive property between the types of wins and losses teams experience.
Games are games, and within them are challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities. And while we saw the Celtics basically play the game like someone driving home from a dinner that doesn’t agree with them, they can take solace in the fact that they found a way to get home in time before having an embarrassing story to tell. They found a way, and maybe a lesson, in the chaos.
“You look at their record and you might want to relax a little bit, but they still have guys that can compete at a high level and can’t kind of just assume that we’re going to win,” Derrick White said. “That’s just not the case. We kind of just settled down and, first trip back from a road trip is always the most difficult for whatever reason. And it’s nice to struggle and still get a win.”