Sam Hauser’s phone started going off in his locker.
“Hey Sam, your mom’s calling,” Jrue Holiday shouted.
It was, without a doubt, a congratulatory call after Sam’s career-best 33-point night, which also included a record-setting seven 3-pointers in the third quarter.
“You can answer it,” he yelled back to Holiday. “Say hi.”
Unfortunately for mom, Hauser was in the middle of another thing that happens to guys who have career nights. He was surrounded by the media, which made the call one of the few long-distance connections Hauser missed on Monday night.
“It's good to have a night like this, for sure,” Hauser said, continuing his media obligation. “These are the types of nights you dream of and the experience is really cool.”
The Celtics needed someone to do something at that point in the game. They were missing Jayson Tatum, Al Horford, and Kristaps Porzingis. Jaylen Brown’s knee was holding him back and Payton Pritchard was ice cold. Only Derrick White, who scored 13 in the second, was doing anything significant. Even Hauser went into halftime with a measly five points on 2-8 shooting and only 1-6 from 3.
“It was kind of a tale of two halves,” he said. “But once you see a couple go in, the rim gets a little bit wider for a shooter. You just try to keep letting it fly."
Hauser became the third Celtic to hit nine 3-pointers in a game during this homestand (White and Pritchard), the fourth to set a career-high in scoring (White, Pritchard, and Baylor Scheirman), and the fifth to score 30 or more in a game (White, Pritchard, Brown twice, and Tatum three times).
“There’s a lot of guys that can shoot at a high level,” White said. “I think we also do a good job with, if someone’s got it going, trying to find them and searching out different ways for them to score.”
Finding Hauser for shots might seem easy, but Hauser has to work for his opportunities. He gets plenty of shots, but they're often not off of actions specifically geared for him.
“He doesn’t have many plays in the playbook, so it wasn’t like we were going out of our way to get it for him,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I think he has an innate ability to find the ball and put two on the ball and create advantages, because of his knack and his ability to move, whether it’s in transition or in the half court. So really, I think the ball has a way of finding him, and the guys did a great job of looking for him once he got hot.”
Even when he wasn’t shooting well, Hauser would find his way to open spots, making it easier for teammates to find him.
“That’s a part of our offense is just creating space for one another and Sam, even if he’s not hitting shots, he’s a threat,” Browns said. “Even when he’s on the floor and he’s not making shots, just continuing to get to your spots, spacing the floor, because at any given moment, Sam can go for four or five threes. Teams know that … at any given moment he can get it going.”
The crowd knows it too. One of the cool things about a stretch like Hauser's is how the anticipation builds with each catch-and-shoot. A 3-pointer takes long enough to get to the rim … especially a high, soft shot like Hauser’s … that fans have time to rise up and build to their crescendo. By the time he got to five 3-pointers in a row, the crowd was in a frenzy.
“It's the worst when you miss it after they do that, too. You really just go, 'Ughhh,’” Hauser joked. “But I guess it's cool. I don't really know what else to say. It's cool.”
That ‘ughhh’ reaction is something Hauser says he has to work on. Showing his frustration after a string of missing open looks is par for the course with most shooters. They all have the utmost confidence in their shots, so sometimes we’ll see a “finally” gesture that lets everyone in on how much angst has built up.
“I try to be better about that,” Hauser said. “Sometimes you know when you miss open ones that you think you should make, you just get mad or frustrated real easy … Been working on better positive self-talk instead of just saying ‘m-f’er’. We're working on it.”
If the work there pays off like it has for Hauser’s shooting, then he’ll be a regular Stuart Smalley.
“He understands his work ethic, he does the same process every day whether he does this or whether he goes 1-for-7,” Mazzulla said. “So the work that he puts in with the staff, the player development team, and just his overall approach is high-level and very professional.”
This probably won’t be the last nine 3-pointer game for Hauser, and a new career-high is probably waiting for him somewhere in the near future.
The only thing to figure out now is his timing. You can only miss so many calls from mom before she gets upset.