It was happening again.
The Celtics, faced with a matchup against a team missing half its players, were playing lazy while an opponent went nuclear. They looked like a team perfectly happy to try shooting their way to a win, except none of their shots were falling. So Joe Mazzulla gave his team an ultimatum.
“He kind of challenged us at halftime,” Jayson Tatum explained. “Joe was like, ‘if you’re tired, then just tell me. I’ll sit you guys down, let the stay ready group play.’ So we had a choice to make.”
The Celtics chose wisely, erasing a 26-point third-quarter deficit to come back and beat Philadelphia ... though the dividends didn’t show up right away.
“It was tough,” Tatum said. “We would get some stops, hit some shots, and then I got back-doored, and-1, D-White missed a lay up, they came down and hit a 3. So it was just like we just had to keep chipping and keep believing until we kind of broke through.”
It didn’t look like they would. The Celtics really tested the limits of how far they could push their terrible play and still come all the way back. They missed a lot of shots, which led to mistakes on defense, which led to easy baskets, which led to frustration pouring out when officials didn't make a call. The Celtics, as usual, were their own worst enemies. But that also means they were in complete control of when things would change.
“It was too many things that was just not important that was affecting us, affected me,” Jaylen Brown said. “Expecting calls or whatever, even against a team like this. They can't stop me, so, like, what am I looking around for? Just play basketball and let the rest take care of itself.”
Last week, the Celtics put one of Brown’s quotes on a white board as a source of inspiration. For the rest of the season, they can make “just play basketball and let the rest take care of itself” shirts, mugs, and water bottles for everyone to carry around with them at all times. If there was ever a message that this team needs to take to heart, that's it.
A funny thing happened when the Celtics finally got around to just playing basketball. They started defending like their normal selves, getting stops, clearing rebounds, and getting out in transition. They started hitting shots, flipping a nine-point halftime deficit at the 3-point line into an 18-point advantage by the end of the game.
“The math evened out,” Mazzulla said. “But you have to play hard. Math and effort. We played harder in the second half and then the math caught up, which gave us a chance, and then we executed and made some big-time plays on both ends.”
You can look no further than Tyrese Maxey’s stat line to understand how this game went. He scored 16 points in the first quarter and 32 through three, but was held without a field goal for the 15-Celtics run to erase a 26-point deficit. Maxey hit some tough shots early on, but then he got anywhere he wanted after that. It wasn’t until Brown and the Celtics decided to play up on him and take away his space that he went cold.
“Our competitive spirit wasn’t where it needed to be,” Tatum said. “We just had to keep fighting. They brought the best out of us. That's how we’re supposed to play. It took a little bit from everybody. Our competitive joy was there on both ends, and it was just fun to be a part of it.”
Fun has come up before. They're supposed to enjoy games like this because, in the end, it’s just basketball. Sometimes a team like Boston will struggle when people think they shouldn’t. The Celtics need to understand that it’s okay if they go cold for a while or aren’t playing like themselves. The problem people have is when that devolves into not trying hard enough.
Playing the game the right way but still failing or losing happens to every team. But when that shifts into giving into the frustration, giving up on plays, and watching opponents fly down the middle of the lane, dunking on half the team and pounding their chests like King Kong, people will have an issue.
There's a reason why I still believe in their ability to win a championship. It’s because I know this team is making choices to play a certain way on nights like this. They struggled for 33 minutes of this game because they were making poor choices and giving in to frustrations. They came back over the next 15 minutes because they were playing hard and defending.
The championship version of this team is still there. How
“The way we played in the first half was not representative of who we are as a team, as an organization,” Tatum said. “Sometimes, it’s just like, man, we gotta remind ourselves who we are. We were down 18 in Indiana last year in Game 3. So we’re familiar with being in those situations. We just had to play with a little more swag.”
They found that swag when they needed to. Now they just need to remember where they put it after the game so they can try starting games with it. Winning this game in Philly was great, but we’re all ready for these guys to remember who they are sooner when they play.
