BOSTON — Jaylen Brown described an antsy week leading up to Game 1 between the Celtics and Nets. Difficulty sleeping. A desire to get this series going. Al Horford felt the week dragging too, despite usually needing some extra rest at 35-years-old.
The Celtics and Nets fouled 18 times and turned the ball over 11 times in a frantic first quarter that lasted roughly 30 minutes. Horford, who waited three years to appear in a playoff game in a NBA arena, stepped into an early three over Andre Drummond and flexed to the crowd after running back a steal from the other end of the floor into a take foul.
Three hours later Horford grabbed his 15th rebound and sent Derrick White running across half court trailing by one with under 10 seconds remaining. Ime Udoka held his timeout, as Jaylen Brown caught a pass from White and dove into the paint, backed down, and fired a pass to Marcus Smart. Smart had under four seconds, pulled up a fake and sent Bruce Brown and Nic Claxton flying over his head. He initially eyed Horford right in front of him. He had room to shoot a floater from mid-range.
Then, he caught Jayson Tatum cutting to his right. Tatum spun past Kyrie Irving and laid the game-winner in at the last possible second. The Celtics won the instant classic Game 1, 115-114, in the most raucous environment Tatum ever remembers playing. He sprinted past Irving, Boston’s bench swarmed him and fans stayed in their seats longer than usual trying to grasp what just happen. Irving stood stunned after watching Tatum spin past him.
Tatum thought Smart was going to shoot.
“First off, you’ve got to credit Ime credit for trusting us in that situation,” Smart said. “To just go. Then you’ve got to give JB credit for pushing the pace, drawing four, and then making the right lead. Then of course me, I’ve always been told you have more time than you realize you have. So when I caught the ball, if I was open I was going to shoot it. Then I seen two guys fly at me, so I’ll take a pump fake.”
Boston blew multiple double digit leads, including a 15-point advantage in the third quarter. Brooklyn helped them build it with an in-bounds disaster midway through the frame. Irving couldn’t find a teammate to pass to, and Smart sprinted to steal the ball Irving threw away as the Nets’ bench shouted for someone to get back. Smart dunked with Bruce Brown just arriving behind him.
Then, Irving, who flipped off the crowd multiple times, unloaded 24 of his 39 points in the second half and bended Boston’s defense after halftime. He hit a pull-up three to cut the lead to single digits late in the third, fired a series of passes to get Claxton an open dunk to start the fourth, then buried back-to-back triples to pull within three. Tatum fed the comeback with a pair of turnovers, becoming a target for Irving out of timeout. His former teammate lined him up twice, blowing right by Tatum to the rim for a pair of layups that put Brooklyn up 102-98.
In between, Tatum threw away a pass right to Bruce Brown with Irving guarding him tightly. Smart missed a pair of wide open threes following traps on Tatum. Jaylen Brown missed a pair of point blank layups and Horford missed the follow. Smart finally creeped too far away from Irving on the left wing to help Horford lined up against Durant, and Irving handed the Nets a 107-102 lead with 5:30 to play. The Celtics entered timeout seeking accountability.
“We talked about staying poised, being able to move on,” Horford said. “At that point, a team can go one of two ways and we got a pretty good handle of the game, then it kind of got away from us. I just give our group a lot of credit because we were able to stay with it.”
Smart, apparently responsible for the breakdown, saved Boston from a collapse that could’ve altered the course of the series. Two plays later, he threw himself into the post and fired a pass to White, who found Brown to his left for a three. He drove again to tie the game at 107 himself, before White matched an Irving jumper with a difficult left-side finish. Horford tied the game at 111 on a put back, then Irving buried one last three with 45 seconds left.
Udoka responded with a high action for Tatum as a diversion to get Brown downhill for an open layup. Then Irving started dribbling, seeking one more shot to silence the heckling he faced all night. He reached the free throw line, where Horford met him with a double team. Irving couldn’t find an outlet right away, using the rest of the shot clock to double back to the left wing. He threw a pass to Durant to his left, who had to heave a long three over Tatum, setting in motion the final 10-second sequence that’ll go down in Boston lore.
“We guarded better. Took great shots. It felt like we had some good looks in transition that we felt were a little rushed all game. We missed some of those and unfortunately they got the numbers coming back the other way. So better offense. Took away some of their transition in the fourth quarter, but then we guarded better when we had to on the last few possessions … went after (Irving) on that last possession and did some of the things we worked on all week. Credit to our guys, they kept battling.”
Boston held Durant to 9-for-24 shooting, 2-for-10 in the first half, by aggressively switching and sending help back side in the lane. They physically invaded his air space on his pull-ups, meeting him in his sweet spots and timing contests perfectly. Tatum laid down a rare block on his mid-ranger, before drilling a spot-up three from the left wing to give Boston an 11-point lead entering the fourth. Getting that kind of performance against a player who’s been unanswerable offensively for much of his season, and losing home court advantage through a meltdown, would’ve transformed the complexion of the series.
Instead, Brooklyn’s defensive lapses became magnified. The Nets’ lack of ancillary pieces scrutinized. The burden placed on Durant and Irving to keep pace became the story of how they couldn’t win. The conversation fell one second short of veering toward the Celtics’ finishing issues, their stagnant fourth quarter offense and missed layups. Daniel Theis struggled to stay in the game, and Irving lined him up twice for six straight points late in the third quarter to initiate his run. Brown had a similar last-second layup to beat the Spurs in January before the infamous 25-point collapse against the Knicks and squandered it.
That was then and this was now. And while almost the entire Boston bench swarmed Tatum, Udoka darted toward Brown to give him credit for his decisiveness in the lane.
“Huge,” Horford told CLNS Media after. “Jaylen bringing the ball up the floor and making the right play. Understanding that he didn’t have a lane, found Marcus, Marcus didn’t freak out, didn’t settle and made a play happen there.”
