It was almost a beautiful wetting, of the bed that is, or the pants, or, to take a page from my 3-year-old, the couch. A double-digit third quarter lead whittled to 1 after Tyrese Haliburton buried a three after doing the robot for a few seconds. It felt as if the Celtics had wrestled the momentum back from Indy’s furious run with a big Jrue Holiday three, and then that shot went in.
The 4th quarter was predictably back and forth, but ultimately, it felt like the advantage was Indy’s. Andrew Nembhard hit a deep pull-up two with just under 2 minutes left that stretched Indy’s lead to 5. But what a shame.
And then the Jays (Jayson, Jaylen, and Jrue) chimed in with a sense of poise and rationality. First it was Jrue, he cut the lead back down to 3 with a bunny layup off a slick Derrick White feed.
And then Tyrese Haliburton did the impossible: he missed a pull-up. Now it was Jaylen’s turn. He’s fouled by Siakam on the rebound with 57 seconds left. There was one person in that building that trusted Jaylen to make both of those free throws. Luckily, it was him. The epitome of poise. 1 point game.
Nembhard comes back with another monster shot. Derrick and Tatum miss a few makeable looks, and all looks lost. Until it wasn’t. JB pressures Siakam into a turnover. Then Joe draws up a beautiful ATO that didn’t actually end in a very good shot. It doesn’t matter. Tie game.
Enter Jayson Tatum. His overtime run got most of the attention, deservedly so, but his defense on the Haliburton final shot was game saving.
An intelligent and aggressive read to come off Turner and pass him to White. Tatum saw Haliburton had White beat, but he stayed poised, and he made the play.
But JT wasn’t done. In the final 2:30 minutes of overtime, Tatum hung 10 points on the Pacers. He flashed it all. Drawing fouls, finishing through contact, and hitting a monster three to close the g-damn door on the Pacers in Game 1.
There is no such thing as a bad win, but this comes pretty close. There’s a lot of bad to take away from this game. Jaylen’s rational post-game comments drove home that point. He’s become the emotional leader of the Celtics, and he flashed every bit of that after the game. It wasn’t good enough for Jaylen, which means it wasn’t good enough for everyone.
That is extremely encouraging. This iteration of the Celtics has often been unable to conjure up a little magic late in games to snatch victory from defeat. They’ve far more often gone in the opposite direction. They’ve often talked of learning from those defeats. Maybe Tuesday night proves they have, or maybe they just got lucky. Either way, they approached the end of that game the way a champion should. They refused to die.
It may not have been the prettiest win, but it all counts the same. Tragedy avoided. And now, we get to celebrate. So, pour the champagne, pour the champagne.
