BSJ Game Report: Celtics 127, Timberwolves 120 (OT) - Tatum, Brown combine for 80 as C's set home record

Everything you need to know about the Celtics overtime win over the Timberwolves, with BSJ insight and analysis

IN A NUTSHELL

Jaylen Brown (15 points) carried the first quarter again for Boston, but a balanced attack kept the Timberwolves close. The second quarter was a disjointed mess with Boston going nearly five minutes without scoring at all and six without a field goal. Their one-point halftime lead was tossed back and forth in the third until a 9-2 run gave Minnesota a six-point lead heading into the fourth. It grew to nine with four minutes to play but Boston outscored Minnesota 16-7 the rest of the way to force overtime. They extended that run to 32-16, 20 of those points scored by Jayson Tatum, to own the overtime and grab the win. 

Box Score

HEADLINES

- What a win: From down nine to up seven in the span of nine minutes is a hell of a swing at that point of the game, especially considering how the game had gone to that point. They didn’t seem to be in a place to stage a comeback, but they found a way. 

“We was kind of sluggish to start the game, most of the game,” Tatum said. “Really, that last six minutes in the fourth and overtime we really kind of played like ourselves and that's kind of the scary thing … for like 12 minutes of the game and overtime, that's the only time we really played like ourselves on both ends and we still managed to win the game, that just shows that we can be a really special team.”

- Stars step up: Tatum and Brown combined for 80 of Boston’s 127 points. Tatum scored 20 of his 45 in that 32-16 closing run. He was absolutely unguardable. And then Brown, who as usual did most of his scoring damage earlier in the game, was a beast on the boards and defensively against Anthony Edwards. 

- Perfect at home: Boston is now 18-0 at home, something that hasn’t happened since 1957-58, the season after Boston’s first championship. In fact, that team played one of those 18 wins to start the season in Providence, so technically, this is Boston's best start ever in their home building. 

“So there’s been two times that I’ve actually showed that I have a pulse, and tonight was one of them and it was because of the crowd,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I’m not going to say we’re 18-0 at home without that. … 

“I think over the course of this season, they’ve seen moments of greatness, they’ve seen moments of Celtic basketball and they’ve responded to that really well and I think that’s had a huge impact on our team. And to me, especially being from here, there’s nothing better than getting the Garden, the crowd to appreciate Celtic basketball. And so I think the connectivity between us and the identity of the city and the identity of the arena is kind of building something for us, and tonight specifically, even when we did suck, which we did at times, they did a good job of keeping us in it, and I think that’s important to have that relationship with the crowd and with the city.”

TURNING POINT

There are a couple of spots here to fully capture how Boston won this game. 

First, the Celtics challenged and won an out of bounds call with 2:12 to go in the game and Minnesota up 109-102. Nickeil Alexander-Walker had just hit a 3-pointer to answer two Brown free throws so the four point lead grew to seven. The initial call was Minnesota ball, which would have given them possession and a chance to go back up nine or 10. Instead Boston got the ball and went on a 9-0 run to go up two before Edwards tied the game to send it into overtime. 

So that was the point that got Boston the extra five minutes. 

In overtime, I think the take foul on Jaden McDaniels after Tatum’s steal early in OT was a big deal, because it gave Boston a free point and the ball, which then became a Tatum dunk. There was still a lot of back and forth after that, but stopping the game, giving Tatum a free throw, and then setting up a play that led to the dunk got the crowd really going. 

THINGS I LIKED

- Jaylen Brown’s rebounding: I’ll get into this more separately, but among all the things Brown did for the Celtics, the rebounds he got down the stretch might have been the biggest of them all. He had 35 points, but he also had 11 rebounds. 

- Brown’s defense: He took on the challenge of guarding Edwards down the stretch and held him to just a pair of free throws over that closing Boston run. 

- Tatum’s takeover: The best part of that nine-minute stretch was that it only involved two 3-pointers. He was 6-7 from the free throw line, and the rest was just relentless attacking. 

“Just understanding that they had some guys in foul trouble who, with five fouls that late in the game, kinda just put the pressure on them and the refs,” he said. “I hit some 3s but I didn't want to settle. I was getting to the line quite a bit tonight so yeah, I was just trying to put the pressure on them knowing a couple of those guys were in foul trouble.” 

- Derrick White sticking with it: Tatum missed one free throw, and it’s a good thing he did because White swooped in to grab the offensive board and start a sequence that gave Boston the lead with :26 to go. 

This was not a good night overall for White, but he came up with that play when it mattered. 

- Jrue Holiday: Gotta respect the stones it takes to put up some of the shots he takes. 

“Right when it left my hand, I thought it was going in,” he said. “And the ones that I missed, the two, I thought they were going in, too. I'm glad the one at the end of regulation went in."

And then Holiday made a monster defensive play, getting a steal with a minute to go in the overtime and Boston up two. 

Mazzulla called it a very Jrue Holiday game. He only shot 33% from the field and 2-10 from 3, but the plays he made were well-timed.

- Free throw shooting: Before the game I asked Mazzulla about the recent stretch of rough free throw shooting. He kind of shrugged about it, which is what I expected. Then the Celtics came out and hit 30 of 31 at the line, with Brown going 13-13 and Tatum going 13-14. 

- Al Horford: Just another glue game for Horford, who hit 3-6 from 3 to go along with eight rebounds and five assists. 

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE

- The effort for most of the game: Maybe effort isn’t the right word. For all the talk about Minnesota and their travel issues, we didn’t factor in Boston playing their fourth game in six nights. 

“I read somewhere that they said we got like the easiest schedule remaining,” Tatum said. “I don't know when that shit gonna start, but it's not right now.” 

The Celtics lost their focus a little too easily for most of the game. They could have broken out of their funk a little bit sooner and spared us all the drama. But what fun would that have been, I guess. 

- Points in the paint: They gave up 50 PITP, and they were getting decimated by Kyle Anderson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Not having Kristaps Porzingis hurt in that regard, but they could have done better defensively on the perimeter. 

HIGHLIGHTS

ONE TAKE KARALIS WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER

- The championship-level evidence keeps mounting

The Celtics aren’t where they want to be yet, which, as Tatum said, is indeed scary. 

Maybe I made too much of the travel stuff for the Timberwolves. As their coach Chris Finch said before the game, if they had a normal travel day they would have gotten to Boston at 3:30 in the morning, and it’s not clear that that's much better than getting in on a game day. 

Hell, Mazzulla joked that he used to drive a 12-passenger van to games as a Division 2 coach on the days of games all the time. It’s a little bit different to ask those players to guard Tatum and Brown in that situation, but the point is well-taken. 

Either way, the game played out the way it played out, and the Celtics pulling it off the way they did was incredibly impressive. Once again, they stuck with it and didn’t let the late Minnesota run get them down. 

“When you have a lead and then you lose a lead, you can have a tendency to play sped-up basketball, and play a little panicky basketball,” Mazzulla said after the game. “I thought our guys did a great job just regaining a poise, regaining just our spacing and really execute, and I thought we had some big-time rebounds, big-time stops down the stretch.”

They got past a tough stretch where they ended up settling for tough shots. They withstood the huge punch from the Timberwolves defense. They took everything Minnesota had and they answered. 

There is a lot of time in an NBA game. Playing 48 minutes of basketball is an eternity. And with the 3-point shot, a couple of minutes is all a team needs to flip a single-digit deficit into a lead. All they need is patience and confidence. 

Patience has especially been an issue for these guys in recent seasons. The ability to play with some poise even as the time starts to tick away is an elite skill. These guys are really honing that. 

That's championship-level stuff. 

Next Up: Boston immediately travels to Milwaukee for a back-to-back tomorrow night