INDIANAPOLIS -- This looked like a very typical Celtics loss.
It starts with actually coming out strong. People often mistake Boston’s struggles in games like this as complete no-shows from the beginning, but the Celtics frequently start pretty well. They put up 32 points and shot 57% in the first quarter, but they couldn't shake the pesky Pacers because they allowed 31 points on 59% shooting.
Step two is cooling off offensively and having that affect their defense. The Celtics dipped to 43% shooting the second while Indiana went in the other direction. They shot 68%, hitting every 2-pointer in sight, and Andrew Nembhard went off for 17 points.
“They were just flying around,” Jaylen Brown said. “Then they were shooting the ball well, some of those guys turned into f---ing Michael Jordan or whatever. We were like, ‘What is going on?’ We couldn’t figure it out.”
When the Celtics can’t figure something out, they become their own worst enemies. That's when they started to look bad.
“We were searching for answers because they were shooting the ball so well,” Al Horford admitted. “I think Joe (Mazzulla) was just trying to switch our defenses up, matchups, different things we were trying -- you're just desperate, trying to find something.”
The Celtics threw some zone at the Pacers, some switching, Oshae Brissett, Xavier Tillman … whatever Mazzulla could think of. But as usual with the Celtics, it’s less about the strategy and the X’s and O’s and more between the ears. For the Celtics to find their way out of this mess, they had to embrace being in the mess in the first place.
“It was one of those timeouts in the third quarter. Joe just kind of told us stop feeling sorry for ourselves,” Jayson Tatum said. “We kind of felt lucky that we were playing as bad per se, as we were and how well they were shooting the ball and we were only down 13, 14 points on the road and we still had a lot of time left to win the game.”
Mazzulla has been tinkering with the Celtics psychology for a long time now. Their biggest obstacle over these last few seasons has never been talent or ability. They’ve had plenty of both for a long time. But their propensity for panicky play has been too costly for too long. Mazzulla has been called crazy a few times this season, but the method to his madness has been to get his players to embrace the moments they're in; to stay present, no matter what.
“Once we embraced the fact that we were down double digits on the road in Game 3 against Indiana, I thought it was pretty fun,” Mazzulla said. “I loved just the approach that we took, I loved the mindset that we had. I thought we executed well on both ends of the floor, and we made the plays that were necessary to win, and that’s how games are going to go. You have to be able to win in different ways, you have to be able to get through certain stuff, and I thought our guys did a great job of getting through it.”
The Pacers led by 18, 84-66, with 6:04 to go in the third quarter. Boston outscored them 48-27 the rest of the way.
“He really coached us,” Horford said. “It was incredible just to see him going through so many progressions and so many things. And he's demanding of us, and it's something that we accept, and we're behind him, and we're trusting him, and that's what it took tonight. And we kept trusting him, kept doing everything that he was asking for us to do, and we finally were able to break through.”
This is what growth looks like. Yes, they were playing a Pacers team without Tyrese Haliburton. Conventional wisdom says Boston should have marched into Gainbridge Fieldhouse and left the broken carcasses of the remaining Pacers in a heap on the sidelines.
But that's not reality. It doesn’t respect the ability of those Pacers, who are still capable of monster scoring nights. It doesn’t consider the human nature of those Pacers to out-perform their capabilities in front of their home crowd in a building that hasn’t seen a loss in two months. It doesn’t take those lingering habits Boston has been fighting into account.
Despite all of those things, the Celtics were able to still, finally, get to the place Mazzulla wanted them to be. They embraced their predicament and started to find their way out of it instead of sinking under the weight of previous failure. Once they lived in the moment, they were able to seize it.
“It's hard to win in the playoffs no matter who you're playing,” Brown said. “We just value one game at a time, whatever it takes. One game at a time, play like a team, win like a team, lose like a team and tonight we just stayed with it. Now, we’re one game away from getting back to the Finals and now we got to close them out.”
