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Jayson Tatum’s big night helps Celtics beat Timberwolves in OT: 8 takeaways
The Celtics rallied from a fourth-quarter deficit and claimed a nice win.
The Celtics rallied from a fourth-quarter deficit to defeat a tough Timberwolves team 127-120 on Wednesday.
Here are the takeaways.
1. If the Celtics and Timberwolves meet in the Finals (which is not out of the question), that game was not a perfect representation. Kristaps Porzingis was out, which hurt the Celtics’ spacing. Rudy Gobert was out, which hurt the Timberwolves’ rim protection. The Celtics are in the middle of a grueling stretch of games. The Timberwolves were on the second night of a grueling back-to-back.
That said, the Celtics won a big game against a contender. Not only that, they beat a team in overtime (where they were 1-3 previously), and they gathered themselves in a big gut-check moment down seven with 2:46 remaining, made several crucial defensive stops down the stretch and rode a huge performance from their superstar to a victory. There were a lot of distinctly encouraging moments in an undeniably imperfect win.
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“I thought there were distinct moments of brilliance when we just got to our spacing, attacked the right matchup, and made the right play for the team, and I knew if we could just get back to that, just manage our spacing, manage the matchup, make the play, we didn’t need to try to win the game on one possession,” Joe Mazzulla said. “So I thought our guys did a great job just regaining a poise, regaining just our spacing and really execute, and I thought we had some big-time rebounds, big-time stops down the stretch.”
2. By the time Jayson Tatum went to the free-throw line with 36 seconds remaining, the crowd was in a frenzy chanting “M-V-P.”
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Tatum had done plenty to stir them up. After sitting the first four minutes of the fourth quarter, he re-entered the contest and scored 14 points before the end of regulation and added 12 more in overtime — 26 points in 13 crucial minutes that flipped the game in the Celtics favor. After his last 3-pointer splashed through, giving the Celtics a five-point lead with less than a minute remaining in overtime, Tatum delivered perhaps his meanest mug yet and an enthusiastic kiss of death for the Timberwolves.
After covering Tatum for so long, you start to overuse some superlatives for his ceiling, but some of things he did on Wednesday were a good reminder. One example: The way he put his shoulder into Jaden McDaniels and simply drove one of the best wing defenders in the NBA backward for a layup with the Celtics trailing 109-102. Another example: The ensuing possession, when he lulled Karl-Anthony Towns to sleep with his dribble, then buried a triple against the Wolves big man. Another example: His second basket of overtime, when he absorbed what probably should have been a foul from Towns, crossed him twice and drove for a layup.
“Only thing outside my comfort zone might be taking a charge,” Tatum said. “Other than that, everything else I feel comfortable doing.”
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3. The Celtics very nearly were not in a position to win in overtime even with Tatum’s heroics: At the line for the aforementioned “M-V-P” chants, he went 1-for-2, missing the second one. Derrick White, however, swooped in to grab the board, and eventually the ball found its way around the 3-point line to an open Jrue Holiday in the corner. Holiday buried the triple to put the Celtics up two, and while Anthony Edwards made two free throws to tie the game, the Celtics still had a chance to win it in the closing seconds (Tatum’s jumper at the buzer rimmed out).
Holiday finished just 2-for-10 from behind the arc, but he picked a big moment to pitch in one of them.
4. The “your-turn-my-turn” tendencies of Jaylen Brown and Tatum used to be a negative, but it might have turned into a positive at this point in their careers. Before Tatum scored 26 in the fourth and overtime, Brown dropped 15 points in the first quarter and 10 in the third on a wide variety of field goals, finishing a hyper-efficient 9-for-16 for 35 points thanks to a 13-for-13 performance at the free-throw line.
Defensively, Brown clamped Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards (five points, 1-for-7 shooting, three turnovers) in the fourth quarter and overtime.
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“I feel like I can be one of the better defenders on the planet, and I just have to keep improving,” Brown said. “I’ve improved off ball, my on-ball defense has improved. Start making some more plays at the rim, etc., contesting some shots, but that’s something that going forward I think that with Smart being gone, etc., Rob being gone, I wanted to make sure to start the year that our defense didn’t wane. So I’ve tried to lead by example all season.”
5. The Celtics could use a big game from Derrick White on Thursday, and he’s due for one — he’s 7-for-27 overall and 3-for-13 from 3-point range in his last two games. A big contest against the Bucks on TNT would double as an important contribution against a rival and some nice publicity for All-Star voters.
6. The Celtics are now a franchise-record 18-0 at home. Mazzulla in part credits the TD Garden fans for the success.
“We want to create this identity of playing Celtic basketball because the fans are really smart, and they know when we suck and they know when we don’t, and they’ve seen great basketball for a long period of time,” Mazzulla said. “So usually if they’re cheering, it’s because you’re doing something right, and I think over the course of this season, they’ve seen moments of greatness, they’ve seen moments of Celtic basketball and they’ve responded to that really well and I think that’s had a huge impact on our team.”
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The Celtics’ upcoming schedule at home has a few potential stumbling blocks. Next up, they face the Rockets in Ime Udoka’s return, which he presumably has a little extra incentive to win. The defending-champion Nuggets pay a visit on the 19th.
7. Holiday will make his return to Milwaukee on Thursday where he spent three years, won a title and made an All-Star team.
True to form, he wasn’t particularly emotional about the return postgame with the media.
“We’re a good team. We’ve beaten them before. I’m very confident that we have a good chance of beating them again,” Holiday said. “So I think to be able to go back to Milwaukee should be fun, again, a place where I was there for three years and we did great things there.
“But I’m on to better things.”
8. The Celtics and Bucks tip off at 7:30 p.m. The showdown will be the second game of a back-to-back, the second game of a three-games-in-four-nights stretch, and the fourth game in a five-games-in-seven-nights stretch.
The Bucks are reeling a bit, but Thursday’s game would be a challenge no matter the opponent, given the circumstances.
“I read somewhere that they said we got like the easiest schedule remaining,” Tatum said. “I don’t know when that s— is going to start, but it’s not right now.”
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