Karalis: The Celtics keep getting themselves in sticky situations, but finding a way out this time matters

With nine seconds to go, James Harden got to the left wing and fired up a 3 that cut the Celtics' lead to two points. 

Six seconds later, after a pair of Derrick White free throws, Harden got to the exact same spot and did the exact same thing. 

Less than four seconds after that, after two Payton Pritchard free throws to push the lead to three, Harden found himself right back on that left wing. A perfectly executed full-court pass to Ivica Zubac and tip-pass over to Harden put him in position to send the game into overtime. 

White saw the shot go up, and all that went through his mind was, “Just hope he missed.”

When the shot went long, Harden put his hands on his head in disbelief. The Celtics had a lead of 24 points in the third quarter and 10 with 89 seconds to go, and Harden just missed a chance to erase it all. The Celtics are all too familiar with the pain of late mistakes and lost leads, but this time, they survived. 

“I thought we did a lot of good things, obviously, a lot of things that we need to tighten up, but just kind of finding a way,” White said after the narrow win. “James has been making shots like that his whole career, and so just sticking with it, be able to execute our out of bounds and get the ball in bounds, and be able to knock down a free throw and stuff like that, what you gotta do to win the game.”

With 19 seconds left, the Celtics broke a Clippers press to get a crucial dunk and extend their lead to five. It’s a little bit of execution the Celtics have been missing so far this season.

“I think we just made some plays down the stretch,” Jaylen Brown said. “I think our guys are getting comfortable in those moments. Some benefits I guess to playing a bunch of close games. We get some more experience, getting battle-tested a little bit."

The Celtics definitely need to avoid putting themselves in these situations. The next step in this team’s progression is avoiding the prolonged stretches of soiling themselves. The end of the third quarter was a rough display of fouls, second-chances, and missed layups that let a team that seemed very willing to roll over and die get a new life. They went from up 24 to up only five in a blink. That's not good. 

At the same time, the Celtics figured out a way to recover. After allowing three offensive rebounds and 12 second-chance points in the third, the Celtics allowed one offensive rebound and three second-chance points in the fourth. The Celtics had just two second-chance points in the third, losing that battle by 10, but had seven in the fourth to win that by five. 

After committing eight fouls that allowed the Clippers to go 11-12 from the line while Boston was 0-2 in the third, the Celtics committed five and won the free-throw points by one in the fourth. Harden nearly stole the show with 18 fourth-quarter points, but Brown was right there with 13 of his own to help offset the damage. 

The Celtics weren’t as flashy in the fourth, but they took six more shots than the Clippers, mostly through turnovers and second chances, that allowed them to match L.A.’s 10 made field goals even though Boston didn’t shoot it as well. 

“You’ve gotta understand it’s a game of runs. Teams are good,” White said. “And I think when those times happen you’ve just got to try to find a way to change the momentum, whether it's an offensive rebound, whether it's just getting a stop or getting a steal. So any way you can change the momentum, just making a hustle play, whatever it might be. So you’ve just got to try to find that play.”

The Celtics are a .500 team after 14 games, but considering their 0-3 start, they’ve done some good work to get to this point. If they win 55% of their games moving forward, they’ll be a 44 or 45-win team. They’ve won seven of their last 11 games, a 64% clip, so they have it in them. 

They will need some luck along the way. I’m not going to pretend the Clippers were at their best in this game. They're off to a rough start to the season and a 3:30 p.m. East Coast tip for a West Coast team, on the road, a day-and-a-half after a double OT game, wasn’t ideal for them. The Celtics were taking full advantage of that until they tripped over themselves in the third quarter. 

But results are results, and those matter. A win makes the hour or so in the film room with the coach cussing everyone out a little more tolerable. The good stuff that happened means a little more, and there was plenty of good stuff to go around. 

Pritchard found his shot. Jordan Walsh guarded Harden well enough that maybe the next time refs see him defending a star, they might not have such a harsh whistle. Brown wasn’t his most efficient self, but he grabbed 13 rebounds, seven of them in the fourth quarter. 

And hey, even if Harden had made that shot, it would have sent the game to overtime, so it’s not like they narrowly avoided a loss. The Clippers very easily could have run out of gas if they were forced to play five more minutes. 

What matters most is the Celtics finished the job this time. It’s a small win, but the Celtics need to stack these kinds of successes so they can build on them. 

“(You) take every win in the NBA,” Pritchard said. “Get back to 500, and now we can start climbing out of the hole we put ourselves into.”