INDIANAPOLIS – Jayson Tatum’s favorite postseason matchups are Game 3. “Going into an opponent’s house is their first home game, the crowd is electrifying,” Tatum said. He’s accustomed, mind you, to the third battle of a series taking place on the road, as Boston has enjoyed home-field advantage in at least the first round of the playoffs during six of Tatum’s seven seasons with the Celtics, including one top- two seeds in each of the last three years. He dribbles aggressively and defends with intensity and gets around his massive shoulders for critical plays on the glass. He feels a moment and the need to deliver.
Tatum viewed Gainbridge Fieldhouse as a hostile environment that he needed to silence on Saturday night. The Pacers haven’t lost in this arena, in front of this golden sea of checkered flag jerseys, since March 18 — including a 6-0 postseason record. Indiana appeared to be on track to extend that streak even without injured All-Star point guard Tyrese Haliburton, thanks to a blistering display of mid-range shooting that built an 18-point lead at 6:04 of the third quarter.
Lineup adjustments and matchup adjustments by Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla helped Boston inch further into another pivotal moment contest. And who was it but Tatum, finishing with 36 points, 10 rebounds and 8 assists – the first in NBA postseason history to record those numbers without a single turnover – drawing two on a powerful drive with just over a minute remaining. Tatum saw that Myles Turner had fallen to the baseline and read the Pacers center like a children’s book. If he was here, that meant Turner left his real mission, perennial Celtics big man Al Horford. And once Tatum convinced Turner, as well as two other defenders, that he was shooting in the lane, Tatum sent his dribble behind his back, the ball bouncing once and directly into Horford’s pocket.
“I trusted he would be there,” Tatum said, and Hoford’s seventh triple of the contest — five of which were assisted by Tatum — splashed into the cotton. It’s the kind of brilliance that earned Tatum this week’s first-team All-NBA honors for the fourth straight season. It was the kind of postseason pass that will shine in the highlights well beyond the moment the Celtics’ run stops cooking, something that deserves celebration. “Hang it in the fucking Louvre,” Celtics All-Star guard Jaylen Brown said.
Boston, of course, only cares about hanging flags, and this gutsy 114-111 victory, securing a 3-0 series lead over Indiana, may be the Celtics’ biggest claim, but the best regular-season team in the league can actually withstand this playoff gauntlet. Yes, injuries have plagued each of Boston’s postseason opponents – Haliburton’s hamstring follows Donovan Mitchell’s calf and Jarrett Allen’s ribs and Jimmy Butler’s knee and so on – but this early fight against The Pacers looked awfully reminiscent of the Celtics’ Game 2 losses in each of their first two series, like the shocking cases where Boston’s high-powered offense has looked like this, up to this point – Boston held on.
His defensive execution lacked timing and tenacity. Outside of Tatum and Horford, the Celtics’ other shooters sputtered, shooting just 4 of 22 from distance. “When those things didn’t happen to us in the past,” Horford said, “it wasn’t good.” Mazzulla, though, has been preparing Boston for the particular challenge of this game, for the particular challenge of any game, all season long. “Joe always says, ‘It’s not always going to happen the way we want or hope,’” Tatum said. These 48 minutes rarely follow the script, but Mazzulla preaches being ready to scribble everything in red ink.
“Joe was trying to do anything and everything he could to help us,” Horford said.
“At one point I looked at the scoreboard and thought, ‘Dallas lost by 18 points last night,” Mazzulla said, referring to the Mavericks’ comeback to steal a 2-0 lead over Minnesota in the Western Conference finals. “This has to be normal. We have to know that we are going to lose in the playoffs and we have to win this.”
Mazzulla and All-Star point guard Jrue Holiday have spent the entire season whispering on the sideline about how to change some coverage here, reverse some action there, to regularly disrupt their opponent. Holiday’s rare ability, at just 6-foot-10, to guard all five positions, unlocks almost any lineup or adjustment Mazzulla can imagine, like putting the point guard on Turner — even after a fever left Holiday bed-ridden with chills. all day, with its status undetermined until warm-up. . And then Boston showed Indiana a lot of zone before switching to one-on-one with backup center Xavier Tillman.
“We’ve changed so many times and done so many different things against everyone in the league that we really feel like we can do a lot of different things defensively,” Holiday said.
Holiday’s exclamation point that night came from that side of the court, a vintage pickpocket in transition, but that only came after the veteran guard, the only Celtics player to hold a championship ring, dropped his shoulder to Pascal Siakam and delivered the go-ahead three-point game with 39 seconds remaining. Then, after Tatum’s last and final shot missed wide, Holiday attacked Pacers guard Aaron Nembhard as he brought in the rebound at the crease. He absorbed a shoulder from Nembhard, who led Indiana with 32 points, and Holiday still had to touch wood to keep his balance. But he beat the sophomore guard, stuck his chest in front of the kid’s chest and dropped the ball.
“This is a trademark robbery that he always pulls off with the upper hand,” Mazzulla said. “He usually gets it when the guy is coming down the sideline in transition. I’m looking forward to some of them. He didn’t get as many as I would have liked this year. It was a great play.”
There’s something about Game 3. And that same pattern, a third outing being the first of Tatum’s series on the road, awaits Boston in the NBA Finals. The Celtics are just one win away from reaching the championship round for the second time in three years. Still, these Celtics know exactly what needs to be taken care of on Monday. A year ago, they won three straight after falling into this exact hole against Miami.
“We know for a second that we can’t relax.” Tatum said.
