BOSTON — Basketball isn’t always meant to be a pretty game.
In fact, there’s no single way a basketball game will appear. The roots are the same. Ten players on the court. Two teams. Two baskets. One orange ball.
But even in today’s NBA -- where the 3-point shot reigns supreme, and players are as talented as ever -- each individual game takes on its own story. And the telling of that story is never as simple as it seems.
Take the Boston Celtics’ game against the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday night. At first glance, it seemed like a tale of two halves. And in some ways, it was. But perhaps not in the way most people interpreted it.
LaMelo Ball came out of the gates firing. He poured in 23 first-half points (and tacked on 13 more in the third quarter). As a team, the Hornets shot 22-of-44 from the field and 13-of-31 from 3-point land in the first half.
They outscored the Celtics 61-55. Boston couldn’t stop the bleeding. Their defense was letting them down. Or, was it?
“Honestly, I think our defense kept us in it the entire game,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I think it's another one of those games where, anytime -- I feel like the easy thing when you're losing or not playing well, you're like, 'Ah, it's the defense.' And you take a look up, and Ball's got whatever he's got. But in reality, I thought our offense let us down the entire first half, and our defense kept it close.”
But how? In a game when the Celtics allowed 61 first-half points, including 23 to one player, how could the defense have been the biggest problem?
The Hornets play fast. And they get up a lot of threes.
Since the All-Star break, no team shoots more threes per game than the Hornets. They are sitting at a whopping 47.0 3-point attempts -- a full 6.5 more per game than the Celtics, for those who aren’t in the 3-pointers fan club in Boston.
When Charlotte came out firing, it was unsurprising. But it was also the nature of the game. If the Hornets are going to fire up a ton of threes, there were inevitably going to be more possessions in the game. More possessions means more points -- for both teams.
“You get to halftime, you’re like, alright, it's a six-point game, we're not playing the way we need to on the offensive end, and here's 10 points that we can get better at defensively. You take that away, we're winning,” said Mazzulla. “So, I thought our defense kept us in it the entire game. I thought we took it to a different level. And then I thought connecting a better offense there made us even better there throughout the second half.”
But if both teams are getting up a bunch of shots, and the Celtics only managed to score 20 first-quarter points, then what was the problem? Offense? Or defense?
The answer likely lies somewhere in the middle. Ball’s scoring outburst was a product of Boston’s one-on-one coverage, largely taking away his passing. But they gave up transition opportunities (because of their empty offensive possessions) and missed some defensive rebounds.
Those small issues add up, and when the offense isn’t firing, a deficit forms.
“It's more possessions, there's going to be more shots,” Mazzulla said. “To me, it's just a matter of, what are we giving up? So, you take a look at the first quarter there, there were two tough threes that they hit, but we gave up two lob dunks in transition. That's the stuff that you can't have, you know what I mean? And then we gave up an offensive rebound putback.
“So, little stuff like that. But I think it's just, every game is going to be different. I thought the guys did a great job competing defensively while we just found our offensive rhythm. Once we did, we connected the game.”
But that last part. Connecting the game. That’s what mattered for Boston.
That’s what made Tuesday’s win so important.
For the second straight game, the Celtics took on a potential first-round playoff opponent. And for the second straight game, they found themselves in a close one at halftime.
But it didn’t matter.
There’s an argument to be made that the Celtics were the lesser basketball team in four of the last eight quarters they played. Maybe even in six of the last eight.
But again, it didn’t matter.
Quarters don’t count in the playoffs. Twenty years down the line, nobody is going to pull up a box score from Game 1 of the first round of the 2026 NBA playoffs and say, "Man, the Celtics got killed in the second quarter there. That’s terrible." That doesn’t happen. That doesn’t matter.
Wins matter. Results matter. The process matters.
The Celtics played Celtics basketball on Tuesday night. They played it for all four quarters. Were there moments when they slipped up? Absolutely. That much is inevitable. But they always responded. It was the same case on Sunday against the Toronto Raptors.
That’s the thing with these Celtics. With these Mazzulla-, Jaylen Brown-, Jayson Tatum-led Celtics. They never waver. They never stray from who they are. And they never stop pushing to raise that ceiling.
“I think we have more levels that we definitely can tap into,” Brown said. “I think we've done a good job of not letting human nature kind of seep in. And at times, that's kind of been our Achilles' heel.”
The Hornets and Raptors are scrapping. Both are in danger of falling into the play-in tournament. Had either team taken down the Celtics, it would have given them a crucial leg up in the Eastern Conference standings.
As for the Celtics? They want to win. The New York Knicks could still sneak up on them and snag the No. 2 seed. But they take on the Knicks on Thursday. That game means a lot more than either of the last two.
Not in Boston’s eyes.
“The teams that we played the last couple games are fighting for seeding,” Brown said. “They're playing [for] maybe a little bit more than what we're playing for, in the trenches, finishing the regular season. We're just trying to get our flow. We're trying to reintegrate guys and just keep playing good basketball. But throughout the game, we've been able to match their level of intensity, and I think that's important for us. But that's something that we can't take for granted.
“Teams are hungry. They wanted to beat us tonight. You could tell. They really wanted that win, and we found a way to get it done.”
They found a way to get it done.
Find a way.
That’s all these Celtics have to do.
It doesn’t have to be pretty. Brown will go through dry spells. Tatum will take some ill-advised threes. Nikola Vucevic will struggle to reintegrate, Derrick White will go through a shooting slump, and Payton Pritchard will get thrown off-kilter by long, lanky defenders.
Boston will get beat in transition, on the boards, and behind the 3-point line. These are all inevitabilities once the postseason comes around.
But no one will be checking quarter-by-quarter box scores when they look back on history. They’ll be checking for banners.
It may have just been a Tuesday-night, late-April game against the Hornets. The Celtics may have fallen flat in some areas -- areas they need to improve upon. But they won. And it was the way that they won. The resolve.
Once the playoffs begin, no matter how pretty or ugly a game might get, they just need to mimic that same resolve 16 times.