Celtics narrowly avoid disaster, beat Pistons in OT: 8 takeaways
The Celtics were nearly the team that no team wants to be.
The Celtics narrowly avoided a deeply embarrassing loss on Thursday with a 128-122 victory over the Pistons in overtime.
Here are the takeaways.
1. That was close!
At some point, the Pistons will win a game. When they do, the team they beat will have the ignominy of being the team that broke the longest losing streak in NBA history.
Last year’s perpetually frustrating Celtics would have been a prime candidate to be that team, and for 24 minutes to start the game, this year’s Celtics looked a little like last year’s group that routinely found the most infuriating ways imaginable to lose. They turned the ball over constantly, they let Cade Cunningham get into a nice groove, and after putting up impressive scoring totals throughout their West Coast road trip, they managed just 20 points in the second quarter and 47 by halftime. The Pistons took a 19-point lead into the break.
The Celtics couldn’t play much worse, and they are a much better basketball team than the Pistons, so a rally was somewhat inevitable. They needed just six minutes to get themselves back into the game, and they traded leads with the Pistons into the fourth quarter. Things appeared decided when they went up by six with just under two minutes remaining, but Jaden Ivey dragged the Pistons back equal again, and the game went to overtime.
In overtime, however, the talent gap finally swallowed the Pistons, and the Celtics pulled away.
After the game, a reporter suggested to Mazzulla that the Celtics had nothing to gain from Thursday’s game.
“Why do we have nothing to gain from winning a basketball game?” Mazzulla asked. “We actually learned more from that game than we did probably playing the four games on the West Coast trip. That’s an opportunity to build a mindset and toughness. So to me, it’s like we have everything to gain in this and you talk about the in-season tournament creating something, how about the level of stress and pressure and anxiety that you felt in that arena today? Like to me, we gained a ton from tonight’s game. I thought it was an awesome opportunity.”
2. Mazzulla was less than impressed by Derrick White’s first half.
“We both agreed it was probably the worst half he’s ever played in his career,” Mazzulla said. “Which to me, it’s like, he just kept playing.”
White finished the first half with two points on 1-for-5 with two turnovers. He finished the game with 23 points on 9-for-15 shooting to go with five assists and four rebounds, as well as two blocks (again). In overtime, he scored 10 points as the Celtics pulled away, including a crucial and-one and a triple.
“Guys like him, he has great poise, great stability,” Mazzulla said. “That’s probably the first time I’ve ever seen it just not go his way, and I really liked how he responded.”
3. The Pistons had absolutely nothing for Kristaps Porzingis. They aren’t the only team to struggle with the Celtics’ unique offensive look, but their issues were stark: Porzingis poured in 35 points, including 17 in the fourth quarter and overtime. Early in the game, the Pistons gave up a couple of switches, allowing center Jalen Duren to end up on someone other than Porzingis, and the Celtics’ center made quick work of the likes of Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanovic in the post. Later in the game, he stretched opposing bigs out to the 3-point line and got out in transition.
4. Jayson Tatum took a lot of heat for a tough shooting night (31 points, 11-for-31 shooting), but he dished out 10 assists, including one to White for a 3-pointer in overtime that pushed the lead to four, and a touchdown pass to Porzingis that increased it to six with less than a minute remaining (Porzingis scored six of Tatum’s assists). Tatum also grabbed five steals and seven rebounds.
“I say it all the time, just trying to have an impact on the game,” Tatum said. “It’s not always going to be scoring. But just doing whatever I can to make sure we win the game.”
5. Tatum did have an opportunity to win the game in regulation, but his pull-up jumper missed. Our two cents on the play: Tatum had Cade Cunningham beat and probably could have figured out a way to snake past Jalen Duren for a layup. Hindsight is 20-20, but that might have been a better result.
Still, the Celtics got the win, so no harm, no foul. Stay tuned for the next edition of, “Jayson Tatum tries to win a game with a pull-up jumper.”
6. One reason the game was so close: The Celtics were out-rebounded 57-43 and 19-11 on the offensive glass. The Pistons outscored them 31-17 on second-chance points.
“They play chaotic and Duren is a great offensive rebounder, really physical guy,” Porzingis said. “And a lot of those guys like [Kevin] Knox, they’re long and they get in there and they’re always running in, so it’s not that easy to box them out. It had to be a team effort.”
7. You can’t help but feel for the Pistons, who aren’t as bad as their awful streak here but (clearly) aren’t very good. Still, they have a number of talented young players, and losing at this volume has to be difficult to deal with mentally.
“I’m not interested in just winning one more game this year, to stop this,” Cunningham said. “That would be soft, in my opinion. I think our goals are a lot higher than that. We have what it takes to win a game. That’s nothing. But to put games together and to find our system, find what’s clicking and allow us to sustain winning … that’s what we’re looking for right now.”
Any time your 22-year-old star prospect has to clarify that he is interested in winning more than one game the rest of the year on Dec. 28, things probably aren’t going well.
“They’re talented,” Tatum said. “They’re more talented than some of the other teams in the bottom end of the standings, especially individually, they got some really talented guys over there. Well coached. … They play hard, they make shots and they’ve lost a lot of games that were kind of close.”
8. The Celtics get little rest after Thursday’s overtime thriller. The good news? The opposition remains relatively weak. They will take on the 12-18 Toronto Raptors on Friday at 7:30 p.m., followed by their first up-close look at Victor Wembanyama in a road game against the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday. The Spurs claimed their fifth win in 30 tries on Thursday over the Trail Blazers.
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