Joe Mazzulla loves a challenge, and despite the Celtics ultimately running away and hiding from the Utah Jazz on Tuesday night, the road to that win wasn’t always easy.
“I wish we could play that team like five more times,” Mazzulla said after the game. “Three times we had a lead and we came down and either had a transition turnover, we took a tough shot, or the offensive rebounding spacing was poor and they were able to get out in transition, they get those easy baskets. And when they see a couple go in, they have life.”
Unfortunately for Mazzulla, the Celtics are done playing the Jazz, so they're going to have to find those lessons somewhere else. The good news, though, is that this road trip was full of the film session moments he craves over the course of a season full of success.
The latest of them was this scrappy, always combustible Jazz squad never laying down and rolling over for the C’s as they wrapped up their five-game roadie. Each time the Celtics pushed their lead into the high-teens, the Jazz found a way to push back.
The Celtics had leads of 15 or more at seven different points in the first three quarters. Five times over that stretch, the Jazz cut a double-digit lead down to single digits. The Celtics never trailed after taking a 15-13 lead four minutes into the first quarter, but whatever lead they had wasn’t safe.
“There was three really important pockets to the game, where it got as close as it did,” Mazzulla said. “I was focused on, like, we got to win those transitions. We got to make sure we get a great shot every time down … and I thought the end of the third and that fourth quarter we dominated the transitions … I don't know if we took a poor shot in that quarter.”
The Jazz get a lot of the credit for fighting back. They were the underdogs facing the mighty Boston Celtics. But the Celtics deserve a lot of credit for their own answers. Playing their third game in four nights, on arguably the league’s most difficult back-to-back, and with the standings heavily tilted in their favor, it would have been understandable if the Celtics packed it in, saved their legs and decided to fight another day. Without three of their top six guys, no one would have blamed the Celtics if they’d just used this as a testing ground for some of their end-of-bench guys.
But the Celtics kept on fighting. I guess they believe in the old adage “don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”
“We kind of went to our bread and butter of (Derrick) White pick-and-rolls,” Mazzulla said. “(It) kind of settles us down and gives us a different frequency and we get different looks out of that.”
Because of the absences, those plays looked a bit different. Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman were on the floor together, a combination you’ll rarely see against a playoff team. Jazz coach (and former Celtics assistant) Will Hardy admitted after the game that his team didn’t do a good job of making Boston pay for that configuration. He even subbed Collin Sexton out of the game because he played into a switch that shifted Tillman off him and Jrue Holiday onto him.
“I just said ‘hey, for the rest of our lives together, anybody but Jrue,’” Hardy explained.
And maybe that inexperience is why the Celtics decided they could sit a few guys for this game. Maybe Utah’s deficiencies are the reason Mazzulla thought pairing a couple of non-shooters was palatable for a stretch. Or maybe he thought getting some guys into the game who don’t usually play would be a remedy for the fatigue people like me were expecting to derail the team in this game.
Whatever the reasoning, the plan worked out.
“I didn't say this enough in the locker room, but the fact the last couple games everybody's stepping up, it's just kind of what we were trying to build,” Mazzulla said. “We have an environment or locker room culture like it doesn't matter who's in. Guys are ready to play at all times. And the work that the player development team does getting guys ready, the professionalism that those guys have, they're just constantly ready. And I have no hesitancy putting any one of those guys in because of the work they do and it reflected over these two games.”
From Jayson Tatum carrying the biggest burden to Kornet and Tillman chipping in when Jazz defenders were distracted, the Celtics found answers to every push Utah made. The Celtics came in tired, but it was the Jazz who seemed exhausted by the fourth quarter. At that point, Boston’s talent and depth took over and the Celtics ran away from a Jazz team that's not close to being ready to finish jobs like this.
But teams like Utah are dangerous for good teams like Boston. The Celtics could have used a few ready-made excuses to make this a different story. Maybe they would have in the past, but they’ve rarely given into that this season. Instead they chose to simply finish the job they started and leave Utah on a three-game winning streak.