Jayson Tatum, Celtics come alive late to take down Nets in OT: 10 takeaways
Tatum did it all for Boston in a gritty win on Friday night.
Jayson Tatum and the Celtics had to grind their way to a 108-104 overtime victory over the Nets on Friday, improving to 8-2 this season.
Here are the takeaways.
Jayson Tatum might be even better.
You can’t really overstate how fortunate the Celtics are to have two players as good as Tatum and Jaylen Brown, given that they are both also deeply committed to getting better every season.
Tatum was the best player on the best team in the league. Through 10 games this season, there’s a case to be made that he has ascended yet another level – that he is the most versatile player in the NBA, and a cheat code of a building block. Much is justifiably made of Tatum’s supporting cast, but there’s also one major reason why Tatum-plus-the-bench lineups have been so good over the years, and with every ounce of due respect, that primary reason is not Luke Kornet.
On Friday, Tatum poured in 33 points on 11-for-25 shooting. He scored down the stretch. He scored in overtime. He hit 3-pointers.
Meanwhile, as has consistently been the case since last year, he took advantage of all the defensive attention and dished out six assists. That included one of the biggest passes of the game – a late assist to Sam Hauser – and another of the biggest passes, a lefty cross-court pass to Al Horford in overtime that knocked the Nets onto their heels for the rest of the period. Tatum recorded four of his assists between the five-minute mark in the fourth quarter and the final buzzer in overtime.
Add nine rebounds (including some big ones late), a pair of steals and a block, and Tatum finished with the type of statline you regularly see attached to MVP candidates.
The difference this year? Tatum still manipulates the defense and finds teammates, but he’s also scoring more on his own. Only Payton Pritchard topped 20 points besides Tatum, and the Celtics shot just 26.4 percent from behind the arc as a team. They really needed superstar production, and Tatum was ready to provide it.
“I think he has the ability to impact the game on both ends of the floor, well-rounded basketball,” Joe Mazzulla said. “So I don’t really care if he gets 30 a night, if he doesn’t do all the other stuff that is most important to winning. When he does that, we’re a different team, and that goes for him, that goes for Jaylen, that goes for all our guys.
“He made a decision in the middle of the game that he was going to impact both ends, and when he does that, we’re a different team, so he did a great job of that.”
The final seconds were chaotic.
The Celtics came close to winning in regulation.
As the final minute wound down, the Celtics got two big stops with the game tied, and Joe Mazzulla leapt to his feet to call a timeout and ensure that they would have an opportunity for a 2-for-1.
That proved prescient – coming out of the timeout, the Celtics got a look that they have carved out for themselves numerous times over the years in the closing seconds with someone else catching a pass in the middle of the court and dishing to Tatum charging down the lane. In this instance, the Celtics inbounded to Jrue Holiday, who bounced a pass to Tatum. Tatum smashed home a two-hand slam to give the Celtics a two-point lead.
On the defensive end, the Celtics got lucky – two players pursued Cam Thomas, which freed Cam Johnson for an open 3-pointer. The Nets sharpshooter missed, but he got the ball and was fouled by Tatum. Johnson made both, and Tatum’s last-second shot bounced off the rim, sending the game to the extra frame.
Tatum picked up another technical.
Tatum can be technical prone, and he picked up his fourth of the season in just 10 games on Friday.
To be fair to Tatum, he had something of a righteous case: He appeared to have an open dunk in transition before Nic Claxton came flying in to block it. Tatum, however, felt that he got fouled, and a replay showed he might have been right – Claxton didn’t appear to get any ball at all on the challenge. Tatum made a scene, and he whistled for the technical.
Before the game, Joe Mazzulla brushed off concerns about Tatum’s technical count, noting that he wasn’t that far behind (Mazzulla has one), and presumably Tatum won’t keep up his torrid pace of technicals.
Still, he’s currently on pace to finish with 32 for the season, which would entail a heap of suspensions, which start accruing at 16.
The Celtics struggled from three.
The Celtics thrive when their 3-point shooters can create and take advantage of space, but they struggled to find the range on Friday, which was part of the reason the Nets were able to keep pace. Tatum shot 5-for-13 from behind the arc and Pritchard was 3-for-7, but the rest of the team was just 6-for-33 (18 percent).
Al Horford was 3-for-9, Derrick White was 1-for-6, and Jrue Holiday was 0-for-4. Sam Hauser may have struggled the most – just 2-for-10, although he made an enormous triple down the stretch.
Hauser contributed in other ways.
Hauser contributed in a lot of ways besides shooting, most notably on the defensive end. He recorded three steals, and when the Nets’ isolation-happy players like Cam Thomas and Dennis Schröder tried to attack him specifically, he generally held his own.
And when he finally broke through, his relief was palpable.
“If Sam’s open, if he’s not open, we always want him to be a threat,” Tatum said. “Not necessarily like shoot it every time, but we have so much confidence in Sam that we were mad at him when he missed it and he was mad at himself. Al was yelling at him on the bench like, ‘Yo, don’t ever put your head down. The next one.’
“We always believe the next one is going in because he’s such a proven shooters, works really hard at his craft. So no, I’m never like, ‘Oh, s—, Sam just missed his last two shots, I’m not about to pass it to him.’ No, I would never think that.”
Mazzulla noted that the statistics will likely work in Hauser’s favor here soon.
“1-for-9 just means he’s going to have a 6-for-10 game coming up here soon,” Mazzulla said. “So it’s just part of the game. He generated great looks. He got great looks. He has to shoot them. Guys have to pass to him, and we move on about our day.”
Jrue Holiday posted up.
With Jaylen Brown out once again (and 3-point attempts chipping the paint off the rim all evening), the Celtics needed offense inside the arc from someone, and Holiday provided 17 points on 8-for-14 shooting. He posted up Dennis Schröder and Cam Thomas in the paint, and he carved out space for himself for a couple of layups. The Celtics scored just two baskets in the first six minutes, and both of them were layups by Holiday.
“He’s just a Swiss Army knife,” Mazzulla said. “I mean, he doesn’t really care what his sub-pattern is. He just doesn’t care. He just plays hard. He doesn’t allow things to impact his effort.
“I thought the middle of the first quarter and the second, he made some physical plays that kind of got us back into it and allowed us to kind of be in that space. So he just has an ability to impact the game in different ways, and he’s always looking for ways to do that.”
Xavier Tillman got the start (it didn’t go well).
Instead of Neemias Queta, the Celtics opened with Tillman – perhaps in an attempt to match Queta with Ben Simmons’ minutes, which would give Queta a chance to roam free as a shot blocker.
Tillman struggled a bit on both ends, and the Nets largely ignored him defensively – opting to surrender whatever open 3-pointer he wanted in favor of clogging up the paint for the rest of the Celtics. Tillman played just six minutes before he sat, and he didn’t return the rest of the way, finishing 0-for-3 from behind the arc.
A reporter asked Mazzulla about Tillman and Jordan Walsh passing up on 3-pointers.
“At the end of the day, they just have to feel empowered that when they’re open, they have to shoot it,” he said. “They work at it every day. I watch them do it. I trust them, and obviously you want to pass and move the ball, but when you pass up a first good look, as good as defenses are in the NBA it’s harder to generate those late in the clock, and so they just have to keep being understanding and empowered that I want them to shoot when they’re open.”
It’s Time(Lord).
Robert Williams missed a year of basketball, but in an 11-minute return, he scored 13 points, made all four of his free-throw attempts, grabbed three boards, dished out an assist and recorded two steals and a block.
He also made the first 3-pointer of his career.
We don’t ask for much here, but a healthy stretch for Robert Williams would be incredibly cool to see.
An update from Maine.
Baylor Scheierman made his Maine Celtics debut and looked the way an NBA player should look against G-League competition, scoring 31 points to go with seven rebounds and seven assists.
JD Davison, meanwhile, scoring 31 points and dished out 12 assists. He also threw down a nasty dunk off a lob from Scheierman.
Maine might have a fun season.
Three games in four nights.
The Celtics have a busy week ahead: Three games in four nights starting Sunday in Milwaukee, followed by the Hawks and Nets on Tuesday and Wednesday (and after Friday’s game, it might be worth noting that the hyper-aggressive Nets could be a tough contest on the second night of a back-to-back). They can then enjoy two days off before facing the Raptors next Saturday.
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