At some point during the third quarter on Friday night, Joe Mazzulla noticed some tension inside the Celtics huddle. They were trailing the nine-win Wizards, a far inferior opponent. So, he turned to some joke-telling.
Jayson Tatum claimed he told one, then Mazzulla told one. The coach thought his was good.
“His wasn’t that funny,” Tatum said.
“We were losing at the time,” Jaylen Brown said. “I didn’t find it funny.”
Mazzulla refused to share his joke with the media because it was inappropriate. But he thought it did the job.
“It broke the tension because we were playing with the expectation of why is the game going the way it’s going right now,” Mazzulla said, “instead of just enjoying the fact that this is a game so we should just compete.”
Maybe the jokes weren’t that funny. But maybe they were needed. The Celtics played lazy, uninspired basketball in the first half, and trailed by seven at halftime. They were still losing midway through the third. It wasn’t going the way they expected. The league-leading Celtics were supposed to wipe the cellar-dweller Wizards off their home floor. But it wasn’t happening.
Mazzulla, in his fight to eliminate those expectations, sparked them with some humor. It wasn’t necessarily a conventional coaching method, but apparently it helped them. The Celtics flipped a switch late in the third quarter and went on a run that carried them to the finish line of another imperfect performance, but nonetheless a 133-129 victory.
“Joe told us, somebody tell a joke or somebody laugh or smile,” said Tatum, who had 35 points. “We put so much pressure on ourselves that we gotta get back to remember to have fun in those moments, that it’s not always gonna go the way that everybody thinks it’s supposed to.”
The Celtics, who head to Miami on Sunday with a 40-12 record, played far from great basketball over their seven-game homestand, but still finished it with a 5-2 record. It was a stretch that taught and reminded these Celtics – who tore through the league with routine blowout wins to start the season – several lessons, perhaps none more important than humility. That it’s not supposed to be easy all the time, even against the Wizards.
With the All-Star break looming in less than a week, the Celtics are not only fighting expectations but also boredom and complacency. They’re comfortably in first place atop the Eastern Conference, and it can be hard at this time of the year to stay motivated against inferior opponents. As much as the Celtics have preached and mostly practiced a focused, consistent mindset this season, there are times when human nature takes over, when they give in to the expectation that a game is going to be easy.
“It’s very difficult, because especially if you think about our record, it’s very easy for us to be like, ‘OK, we go in this game and we’re confident we’re going to win,’” said Kristaps Porzingis, who finished with 34 points. “But a lot of times, it just doesn’t happen for us. We have to win the game. We have to have that humility of like, ‘OK, we have to earn this win again and again and again.’”
The Celtics did not look motivated in an atrocious first half defensively. The biggest tell was their transition defense. The C’s rank among the league’s best in limiting fast-break points. They entered allowing just 13.5 per game. But they gave up 18 in the first quarter, and 26 in the first half.
Some of those struggles had to do with several missed layups and missed 3-pointers – they started 3-for-16 from deep – that led to run-outs for Washington. Mazzulla said there were about 10-12 transition points that were because of a lack of effort, but mostly that the Celtics struggled to keep up with the Wizards’ pace. The Celtics trailed 71-64 at halftime after a 14-2 half-closing run from the Wizards that included four 3-pointers over the final 90 seconds. There were some groans inside TD Garden as the Celtics walked to the locker room.
Mazzulla said there was no halftime talk beyond showing the team those transition points that were effort-based. In the third, he was thrilled with how the Celtics responded. He saw them embrace that the game was harder than expected, and they took control of the pace by raising their defensive intensity and methodically dominating the Wizards offensively with mismatches.
The Celtics went through Porzingis, who continuously punished a Wizards team without a true center, throughout the night by getting easy buckets over smaller defenders or getting to the free throw line, where he went a career-high 14-for-14. He and Tatum led a dominant 24-9 surge to end the third as they got to the basket with ease and 3-pointers finally started falling.
After giving up 71 in the first half, the Celtics allowed 16 points in the third and flipped a seven-point deficit into a 13-point lead.
“We had to have some Spiderman instincts, be all over the place on defense,” Tatum said. “That was a little extreme but (Mazzulla) was uplifting. It’s a long game but I think that third quarter kind of sparked the run.”
The Celtics used that run to bring them home, even after a shaky end. They led by 14 with 2:27 remaining, but like Wednesday’s win over the Hawks, nearly coughed it up. The Wizards cut their deficit to four twice in the final minute, but the C’s held on.
The Wizards, after just 16 points in the third, erupted for 42 in the fourth behind seven 3-pointers, and tied a team record with 20 3-pointers in the game. Mazzulla seemed unconcerned, saying the Wizards don’t typically shoot 43 percent from deep like they did on Friday, but the Celtics have certainly experienced some defensive slippage recently.
“I don’t think they are habits. I think there’s been stretches,” Mazzulla said. “I do think there’s been moments of slippage throughout games, which you obviously – it’s going to happen throughout. But I think what I care more about is our approach to those slippages. I don’t think you’re going to negate those. I don’t think you’re going to eliminate those. It’s just not going to happen, but the response to those is important, and making sure they don’t slip for multiple quarters, multiple games.”
It hasn’t been perfect for the Celtics lately, like it looked at times at the beginning of the season. It hasn’t been easy, like they might expect it to be on certain nights. But that’s how Mazzulla wants it, so that he can continue teaching them valuable lessons of eliminating those expectations.
“Our team mindset has to be we have to earn the win regardless of who we are playing,” Mazzulla said. “Just because it’s a nine-win team doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a close game. We should almost rather want it to be a close game. We got to work on a situation that we simulated in shootaround.
To me, I’d rather have that than have a blowout, because we walked through two situations, and they both happened in the exact game, and we got them down pat. I want as many (close) games as possible.”
And they’re learning those lessons while still winning.
“It’s a full journey in a season,” Brown said. “It’s gonna be highs and lows. It’s gonna be good games, it’s gonna be games you got to figure it out, shots are gonna go in, and shots are not gonna go in. As a team, being able to stick together through it all is what’s important. And that’s what we’ve been doing. Every night is not gonna always be perfect. We’re not gonna blow every team out every single night. But we still find ways to win. We still find ways to add to winning, and that’s important.”
