The Celtics and Magic were locked in a slugfest, which is to say they were playing a normal Celtics-Magic game. One team took a little lead, the other team answered, and then they hit each other with body blows for a while.
So Joe Mazzulla tried something different. He sent Jordan Walsh and Hugo Gonzalez out to start the fourth quarter with Payton Pritchard, Derrick White, and Neemias Queta. As they were walking into the game, Walsh turned to Gonzalez with a message.
“Let’s just mess the game up,” he said. “For everybody. So that's what we did.”
Walsh and Gonzalez delivered.
The first basket of the fourth quarter was a Walsh left-corner 3-pointer off a Pritchard drive-and-kick.
Little did we know that was a bit of foreshadowing.
It was followed by Gonzalez finding Queta for a dunk off a sweet drive. Luka Garza checked in and hit four shots. In fact, of Boston’s 13 made field goals in the fourth quarter, 10 involved Walsh, Gonzalez, or Garza either by scoring or assisting on the play.
“It's awesome. That's what I like,” Jaylen Brown told reporters in Orlando. “That's what we need. We just need to have a collective effort every single night and find ways to win.”
Walsh made sure the Celtics finished off their win by doing what he’d done 11 minutes prior. He found his way to a corner, albeit the right corner this time, he took a feed from Pritchard, and he drilled the shot.
“First, I was thinking Jaylen’s gonna shoot this, so let me go get a rebound,” Walsh said of the play. “Then he swung it to P, and I was like, ‘wait, P might pass it to me,’ so I was like, let me get out. So I got out, and he saw me, he hit me, and I hit it. I was like ‘oh my goodness.’ I didn't even celebrate it. I think I was just kind of like in the moment.”
Everyone else did the celebrating for him. His teammates shot off the bench as Orlando called a timeout, mobbing him on his way back to the bench. Brown turned to the Magic bench and let out a massive victory yell like this was a deleted Braveheart scene. Pritchard and Mazzulla trusted Walsh to be on the floor and in the right spot, and the celebration was the vindication of Walsh validating their decisions.
“One of the reasons why I trusted him and went with him is because of his work ethic behind the scenes,” Mazzulla said. “His body language and work ethic never changed, even when he wasn't playing.”
This is the toughest part of the job for someone like Walsh. Minutes aren’t guaranteed, and opportunities are fleeting. Not playing in a game can be disheartening, but any lapse in focus can do him more harm than good when Mazzulla eventually calls his number.
“I don't want to not be prepared and miss that moment, because when you miss the moment, then it's like another one doesn't come for another 10 games, eight games, or whatever,” Walsh said. “So it's just kind of like always being ready for whatever that next moment or position is to be ready for it.
“I watched the scouting report three or four times. I honed in on (Paolo Banchero) specifically because I knew he was gonna be my matchup.”
It worked. Walsh made things difficult for Banchero, bothering his dribble often and straight ripping him for one of his two steals. Walsh’s defensive effort is part of what changed the tone of the game early, and part of why Mazzulla stuck with him later. He and White played the entire fourth quarter, which is a big deal for a guy who has characterized his recent performances as fighting for his life.
“It's a deep quote, and it's probably not that serious, but you have to have that type of sense of urgency,” Mazzulla said. “Especially for a young player, and it's hard to teach that, it's hard to simulate that, it's hard to do that. … He's done a great job of just doing that. He's got to keep it up. It's easy now that you got minutes to relax, and you have to, even when you're playing well, to make sure you play like your life’s on the line.”
While not literally a matter of life or death, it can feel that way to a player teetering on the edge of a spot in the NBA. Whether this is the beginning of something big for Walsh or just a cool story he can tell is yet to be seen. His success will look different on different nights. As long as he’s approaching every game the same way, he’s giving himself a chance to stick around for the long haul.
“The standard is to come in and play that hard, try to affect the game without the ball,” Walsh sadi. “I think that's what we all bought into to do … that's our role that we're trying to carve out.”