Payton Pritchard was sitting at his locker after the Celtics’ 108-104 overtime win against the Nets on Friday night when Al Horford walked past him. Pritchard smiled.
“Al, that 3 was clutch,” Pritchard said. “We needed that.”
Horford nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “I kind of felt like we were due.”
Pritchard was referring to Horford’s dart from the right corner with two minutes left in overtime that gave Boston a 3-point lead, their largest of the game to that point. Horford was referring to everything else that preceded it.
The Celtics were just 14 of 53 from the 3-point line, a level of inaccuracy that is generally impossible to overcome, especially on nights such as Friday, when Jaylen Brown, Kristaps Porzingis, and Luke Kornet were sidelined.
But the unusual path to this win was partly what made it satisfying afterward.
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“We have an expectation to win regardless of who’s on the floor,” coach Joe Mazzulla said. “[Expletive] is not going your way, you’ve just got to figure it out. I like that mentality in them. We had about 18 of those [wins] last year, and this was one tonight where we just have to figure it out from everybody, and I think that’s important.”
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Jayson Tatum scored 33 points to lead the Celtics, but his finest moments in clutch situations had little to do with scoring. With two minutes left in regulation and Boston trailing, 91-89, he carved into the lane before firing a perfect bounce pass to Sam Hauser in the left corner.
Hauser was just 1 for 9 from the 3-point line up to that point, and when he displayed some frustration about his struggles during a timeout Horford tried to squash it, stressing that the team needed Hauser to be confident and comfortable. Hauser hit this big shot.
Then in overtime, Tatum drew three defenders and whipped a lefthanded pass to Horford in the right corner. Horford hit the 3-pointer that Pritchard would later gush about in the locker room.
Then with the Nets trailing by 3 with 30 seconds left, Tatum switched onto Cam Thomas and smothered him, eventually forcing an airball that led to a shot-clock violation.
“[Tatum] has the ability to impact the game on both ends of the floor, well-rounded basketball, so I don’t really care if he gets 30 a night, if he doesn’t do all the other stuff that are most important to winning,” Mazzulla said. “And when he does that, we’re a different team.”
Since the Celtics found a way to overcome their absences and poor shooting, the narrative was generally positive afterward. They have stressed that few wins are easy, so they will take each one they can get.
But it is also true that a team that went 37-4 at home last season was perilously close to dropping its second in a row at the Garden, this one to a team not expected to reach the playoffs.
Horford acknowledged that despite this victory, a few minor warning signs have emerged.
“I just think that we have to make sure that we continue to come out more focused,” he said. “I feel like we’ve eased into the past couple games, and you can’t do that. You simply can’t.”
This time the apparent lack of focus resulted in a 16-2 deficit that the Celtics spent almost all of regulation trying to wipe away.
The Nets pushed back the Celtics’ runs all night and led, 88-82, with six minutes left in the fourth. But they were then held scoreless for more than three minutes, and the Celtics took their first lead, 89-88, on a Jrue Holiday layup with 4:25 left.
With 37 seconds left and the score tied at 92, Thomas (31 points) missed a driving layup and Tatum gathered the rebound. After a timeout, the Celtics set up a two-for-one chance perfectly, with Tatum streaking down the lane for a dunk.
The Celtics then somehow allowed sharpshooter Cameron Johnson to line up a wide-open 3-pointer. They were fortunate he missed it, but he gathered the rebound and was fouled. His free throws with 7.6 seconds left tied the score at 94. After a timeout, Tatum tried to create space at the right arc, but his 3-pointer was off.
Each team scored on the first four possessions of overtime, but a Tatum fadeaway with 1:19 left that gave the Celtics a 105-102 lead was followed by a Dorian Finney-Smith missed 3-pointer, and that was the stop Boston needed.
“I think being able to come down and execute, especially in crunch time, is something that we work on,” Holiday said. “It’s not going to happen for us every game, but to do the best we can is, I think, just effort and concentration.”
