As much as we would like to say runs shouldn’t happen, they often do. As great as a wire-to-wire trouncing of the Knicks would have been, they do actually have All-Star-level players who can pick up a fumble and run with it.
We’ve seen the Celtics play portions of games extraordinarily well this season, only to pack it up and stop playing before the buzzer sounded. They had done some pretty good Dr. Evil impressions, saying “I’m going to leave them alone and not actually witness them dying, I’m just going to assume it all went to plan. What?” So when the Celtics left the door ajar in the third quarter, the Knicks kicking it open and announcing there was still more game to be played wasn’t that surprising.
This final portion of the regular season schedule is an opportunity for the Celtics to prove that what we saw in December and January was, indeed, just an aberration. There are games on the schedule, including two coming up, that can give us a glimpse into how far the Celtics have progressed. The same opportunity lies within games like this, when situations like 23 points from a 27-point lead disappear.
“(We have to have) an understanding of what goes into those, so just tightening up our defensive discipline, our game-plan execution and our offensive execution,” Joe Mazzulla said after the win. “Just fighting to be disciplined in those things throughout the game, knowing that teams are going to make runs, especially a great team as they are. So I think we’re doing a better job … understanding what starts the run and what ends the run.”
What ends a run is making shots, and the Celtics have a lot of guys who can do that. One of those guys is Derrick White, who has never shown any fear of any moment. He has hit big shots on the biggest stage, so a late-February ABC game wasn’t going to rattle him.
“He’s just a silent killer,” Kristaps Porzingis said with a smile.
White, and the Celtics, showed championship poise in holding off the hard-charging Knicks on this Sunday afternoon. Jaylen Brown drew multiple defenders and kept his wits about him, moving off the ball when he needed to. The Celtics didn’t rush plays and didn’t worry, even as the shot clock was winding down. When Jayson Tatum checked back into the game with the Celtics roll already underway, Brown took advantage of the defenders focusing elsewhere to take things over himself.
“It’s is a balance of being aggressive, trying to get to the free-throw line, trying to break their momentum, make a play on defense, make a play on offense,” Brown said. “And it’s a balance of just staying with the flow. It depends on how the game goes; you’ve got to be able to read that. So throughout the game, you’re always seeing what the flow and the rhythm is, and you’ve got to be able to make those decisions based on how the flow of the game is going.”
Following the flow is what makes the Celtics great. They have great players all over the floor, so they can afford to sit back and take some haymakers as they try to find an opening. That opening presented itself when Jalen Brunson finally sat down after playing more than 13 straight minutes out of the half. Brunson was a flame thrower in the Knicks run, scoring 15 of his 22 points in the third quarter. With Tom Thibodeau finally relenting to give his star guard a short break, the Celtics patience paid off.
“We have enough experience and enough calmness about this team that we don’t overreact, we don’t try to win the game in one possession,” Porzingis said. “We know it’s going to be back and forth … Obviously we want to make a run, we want to punch back when they throw a good punch like that so that’s just the mentality and keeping calm and going out there and executing.”
By the time Brunson came back, the Boston lead had doubled and Karl-Anthony Towns was on the bench with a sore knee. All of New York’s work was quickly undone. No one on the Celtics panicked and no one tried to do anything on their own.
The 30,000-foot view from outside of Boston will simply be that Boston dominated, the Knicks made a run, and Boston responded with a big knockout blow. But within that is an answer to a question that had popped up over a few weeks. It’s the settlement of an argument of who this team is, especially in comparison of who they were before.
“It's doing the things that are important to winning close games, especially fourth-quarter execution, ending quarters better, and then being able to win games when you don't have everybody,” Mazzulla said. “That's a big thing, because it shows how important the role guys are, the bench guys are. And so it was good for us to go through that, and we may go through it again. It's going to get only harder, and so we have all the information, and we have the mentality that we need to get through those things.”