The Celtics won, but didn’t slam the door in the final moments against Minnesota. Figuring out how to get better at that will be critical to defending their title
In the pantheon of worthless desires for one’s basketball team, the worthlessest by far is my desire for the Celtics to make a game-clincher rather than their opponent miss a game-winner. This isn’t important. If you want to talk about important things, please direct your attention elsewhere.
The Boston Celtics beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 107-104. They won. That is the data history cares about. But I will remember that Jaylen Brown missed a game-clinching three and needed Naz Reid to miss a game-winning three with triple zeroes on the clock. Boston had the game in Brown’s slightly-clunky-shot-form but then dropped it on the floor along with his keys and Chapstick. Naz Reid picked it up, put the game on his also-clunky-shot-form, and failed to capitalize.
The Celtics were then declared the winner via a split decision. But, perhaps selfishly, I wanted a knockout punch. The Timberwolves had staged a pretty epic comeback to this point, and it felt a bit like Rocky taking it to Apollo Creed only to be declared the loser anyway. Since this isn’t a sports movie, nobody will remember the Timberwolves as the real winner of the battle, but it got me thinking about how this Celtics team can improve when they’ve already reached the promised land:
Ultra-clutch time execution.
The NBA officially defines “clutch time” as the last five minutes with teams within five points of each other, and use that to calculate clutch stats and give out the totally-lame “Clutch Player of the Year” award that nobody cares about. For the Celtics, I’m talking about “ultra-clutch time,” which I define as the last 30 seconds of a game. I want the Celtics to close out games in that space.
Letting teams back into games was the demon the Celtics managed to squash last year, and they rode that self-improvement all the way to a duck boat parade. But it’s been a long-term issue for this group, and largely defined their tragic 2022-23 playoff run. I don’t have any interest in dealing with that again, so I’ve prepared a list of questions for Boston to consider going forward in the name of growth mindset:
Q: In the last 30 seconds, is a contested three actually a good shot?
A: For 99% of a basketball game, shooting threes is a great idea. Gotta win the math battle, I get it. But the math stipulates that over time, shooting a bunch of threes at 40+% will produce more points than your average two-pointers. But when there are only two possessions left in the game, can we play some situational basketball? Go to the rim, set something up. Why does it always look whoever has the ball just runs out of ideas and jacks up a three with 2.4 seconds left on the shot clock?
Q: Who takes what shot when?
A: When it is quite literally the last shot, and it’s either tied or the Celtics are losing, it seems like Jayson Tatum takes the shot. It’s pretty old school, but I’m chill with that, so long as we don’t have a Marcus-Smart-always-somehow-has-the-ball situation. But when the Celtics are winning and trying to seal it, it seems like we’re down to mix it up.
I’d love if the Celtics could just prepare a press release or something, enumerating what they’ve agreed on so the fans know what they’re looking out for. A tweet that reads “The Boston Celtics have announced that, per his new supermax contract, with a chance to tie or take the lead inside 24 seconds, Jayson Tatum will be taking the last shot. #DifferentHere”
Q: Who are our designated free throw shooters in an intentional-foul situation?
A: In this order: Jrue Holiday, Derrick White, Payton Pritchard, Jayson Tatum. Even though Jaylen Brown has improved on last year, I still think he’s on free throw probation in ultra-clutch time. Not the end of the world if he gets the ball, but we can do better.
As fans, we don’t just want our team to be good, we want it to look good, too. That’s the sports movie fan in all of us. Slam the door. End the sentence. Pull up the ladder. Use your favorite we-are-ending-this-right-now analogy and tape it above the entrance to your office so you can slap it every day like Ted Lasso. Throw some knockouts and make the win convincing; don’t rely on your opponent to miss their chance.