With eight minutes to go in Boston’s win over Brooklyn, Sam Hauser picked up Terance Mann in front of the Brooklyn bench, got a steal, and started a sequence that would break a 90-all tie, giving the Celtics the lead they’d carry to the end of the game.
Neemias Queta flashed by him on the left. Baylor Scheierman streaked down the right side. Jaylen Brown and Derrick White flew down the floor, at which point …
… wait.
Hauser, Queta, Scheierman, Brown, and White? That sounds … new.
“It's going to be a lot of that this year,” Hauser told reporters after the game. “The other game, a different lineup was working, so he rolled with that, and that's cool. You just have to trust it. And then tonight, we played a whole different lineup for a good chunk of that third quarter that maybe hasn't played together a lot, and it worked. So he just rolled with it.”
No, Sam. It’s not a lineup that hasn’t played together a lot. It’s one that literally hasn’t played together at all.
Hauser, Queta, Scheierman, Brown, and White had never shared the floor in an NBA game prior to this one. This is a team with a lot of new players, so unique lineups are nothing new to this year’s Celtics, but all five of these guys were on the team last year.
I’ll bet they haven't even played together in a scrimmage at practice. Yet here they were, changing the game, going on an 8-0 run together.
“I think at the end of the day, we all have an understanding of the type of team we have,” Joe Mazzulla said. “When everyone's at their best, we can go to different things. … At the end of the day, we got 12,13 guys that could really impact winning.”
The challenge for Mazzulla isn’t picking from 13 guys at their best. It’s picking the eight, nine, or 10 guys who can play well enough to win when two, three, or four guys aren’t at their best. Because on most nights, a few of the Celtics who have been pretty good in prior games will, for a variety of reasons, not be quite as good in that particular one.
“You could just tell,” Mazzulla said. “We got guys that can bring different things to the game. So I think just that flexibility (we) definitely have to take advantage of as a team.”
That puts guys like Hauser, Hugo Gonzalez, Jordan Walsh, and Josh Minott in interesting positions. Hauser was a starter at the beginning of the season, but then Mazzulla went to Gonzalez for a start before turning to Minott for nine games. Walsh, who either didn’t play or barely played in half of Boston’s early games, has started the last three. Who knows what Friday will bring.
“He’s kind of preached that everybody’s gonna play this year,” Hauser said of Mazzulla’s message to the team. “You just gotta be ready. You just never know when you’re gonna be called. … Stay ready so you don’t have to get ready. That's the big mantra for the Celtics.”
Truer words have never been spoken. You don’t want to be the guy who isn’t ready for when Mazzulla calls your number. Those opportunities can be fleeting and if a player isn’t ready for that moment, then the next moment may not come for a while.
The reason why Mazzulla has so many options is that there isn’t one guy who has separated himself as so dependable that he gets the luxury of playing through bad stretches. Guys like Brown, White, and Payton Pritchard can miss six shots and not worry that shots seven through 10 aren’t coming. Brown committed six turnovers in his first 22:27, but he still got 9:33 of playing time in the fourth.
But Brown is probably going to be an All-NBA player this season. He’s a Finals MVP.
Walsh’s agent was probably starting to look around the league, you know, just in case his guy needed a new landing spot. Josh Minott is only here because Boston WAS the new landing spot. Hauser has an NBA skill that is good enough to get him more of a chance than the rest, but when that's not falling, he has to do a lot more to earn is minutes.
That's why he was on the floor the whole fourth quarter in Brooklyn. He only hit one shot in the final quarter, but he led the Celtics in rebounds (five), assists (three), steals, (2) and plus/minus (+12).
“It's a credit to him,” Mazzulla said. “We all know that he's been a little bit of a shooting slump, but he's not defined by that. I thought his defense was great, I thought his rebounding was really good, and he had a big time steel at half court that I thought kind of changed the game. So it's a credit to him just continuing to chip away at it.”
These same two teams play again on Friday night, but there's no chance it goes the same way in Boston. This Celtics team has too many guys capable of a lot, but incapable of doing them all consistently enough to guarantee results will be replicated. And so the lineups will be fluid again, as they probably will be all season.
“It gives us the best chance to win every night,” Mazzulla said. “Being able to go to different stuff gives us the best chance to be successful over the long run, and the guys are doing a good job of it.”