The Celtics avoided another crunch time debacle on Friday with a dazzling Jayson Tatum finish, launching an elbow jumper to break a 116-116 tie with 0.2 seconds remaining. Boston had squandered a six-point advantage that should’ve become eight when Kristaps Porziņģis split four free throws with under five minutes remaining to begin a 4-for-10 closing stretch at the free throw line for the Celtics.
Add a pair of CJ McCollum finishes past Derrick White and Trey Murphy III racking up five more points to reach 40 points and Boston nearly went to overtime with a Pelicans team missing Zion Williamson, Brandon Ingram and Dejounte Murray after Murray tore his achilles early in the game.
Instead, Tatum’s jumper allowed the Celtics to escape, 118-116, and conclude a maddening January with a chance to score their first three-game win streak since the first days of the month. Jaylen Brown and Tatum combined for 21-of-39 shooting, each scoring 25 points for the first time since Dec. 6 against the Bucks to save Boston as Porziņģis cooled down to 5-for-12.
The clutch triumph gave the Celtics a win in a spot where they badly needed one. Prior to Friday, opponents outscored Boston in the clutch by 10.4 points per 100 possessions, the 19th-ranked net rating in those spots in January. The Celtics won 3-of-5 finishes, narrowly escaping late meltdowns against the Pelicans at home and at the Clippers. They lost to the Hawks and Rockets, each game introducing odd and uncharacteristic mistakes, Monday’s against Houston coming on defensive communication Friday’s happening at the free throw line.
“Sometimes, it can be the clutch numbers,” Joe Mazzulla said on Wednesday. “To me, in this league, the difference between winning exponentially more than not is close games, and we’ve lost a couple of those in different ways. That can be the separator between a five-game win streak and losing three out of five is how you close out the last two minutes of the game … the difference between winning and losing is very small. You gotta fight to get those details. You could have a really good process over the course of a long game or 10 games, but I think closing out games is the difference between sometimes 8-10 extra wins in a season.”
Boston also played six clutch games in December and lost four after winning 7-of-9 in November. That’s 24-of-49 games coming down to close-and-late situations. That’s similar to the 23 they played in through Jan. 31 last season, though that team’s +22.0 net rating in the clutch far surpassed this group’s +4.6. As does their general net rating, now +8.9 compared to +11.7 one year ago. It’s clear already that this year isn’t 2024. Though as January ends, there are signs they’re pulling out of some of the inconsistency they played through to open 2025.
The Celtics finished the month 10-6 with a +4.9 net rating that ranked seventh. They dropped to 13th in offense and fifth in defense, shooting 54.2 eFG% (19th), worse than the Bulls, Heat, Warriors and even the Raptors. This week, that number climbed slightly to 56.6 eFG% and they’re at 55.5 eFG% for the season. Shooting’s a big part of what’s felt like a down season, and for Brown and Tatum, Friday’s surge saw them both still fall below 32% from three, hitting only 44.8% and 42.3% of their shots from the field, respectively.
“J.T., he was due for a nice game-winner, smooth, looked good and he did it. He brought us home,” Porzingis told reporters in New Orleans after Tatum sunk his second clincher this season.
Elsewhere, Derrick White’s emergence from his struggles continued with a 5-for-9 night, Sam Hauser hit three early triples in his return from a two-game absence with hip pain and Porziņģis only cooled slightly from a scorching month, averaging 20.2 points per game on 50.6% shooting while hitting nearly 50% of his threes. Most importantly, the starters logged 10 games together in January, climbed out of their net negative rating to +4.0 and the main rotation mostly returned to full health.
The margin for error is just clearly smaller, even against short-handed opponents, while defensive lapses continued early in the game that allowed Murphy III enough rhythm to fall one point short of his career-high. Jose Alvarado broke free for 20 points off the bench. The Celtics looked a step slow in crunch time as McCollum and Murphy both attacked them downhill. Boston also lost the offensive rebounding battle, 10-5, and lost the possession battle in another slow-paced offensive effort. There are some big picture concerns heading into February, and Payton Pritchard, who scored three points after a scoreless first half, hasn’t been able to clean up as many of the team’s issues in recent weeks with his shooting. As we profiled this morning, the offensive flow hasn’t been as sharp this season.
There’s hope it’s improving after Friday’s win, though, and for Brown and Tatum, whatever weight their offensive slumps this month inflicted on the other parts of their games could be lifted by their big crunch time buckets. Moments before Tatum won the game, Brown pulled-up for a go-ahead two after a no-call on a Porziņģis dunk try led to a pair of missed free throws for the big man in a tie game with 1:16 remaining. Boston finished 18-of-26 at the line, Porziņģis going 4-for-8.
“Of course, I smoked both free throws, unbelievable,” Porziņģis said. “I was like, ‘come on’ … it happens and then the most important thing, J.T. hit the game-winner … beautiful ending.”
