I had already typed “Celtics win” into my notes when Mikel Brown Jr. made me a liar.
Mitchell Robinson had missed two free throws with four seconds left and Boston ahead by three. Fans had already begun filing toward the exits. Across press row, laptop screens flipped from live notes to the opening paragraphs of stories explaining how the Celtics had survived the second night of their first back-to-back.
I closed mine. Rookie mistake.
Brown Jr. caught the inbound pass, took one dribble and buried a three
with 0.2 seconds left. Everybody who had already reached the concourse was about to experience the most confusing elevator ride of their lives.
I reopened the document.
“Not a Celtics win yet,” I added, while privately wondering whether I had caused all of this by getting ahead of myself.
This was supposed to be my first ordinary night covering the Celtics.
Last year, my first three games with a credential spoiled me beyond repair. I saw Jayson Tatum return from a torn Achilles on the same night Cooper Flagg played his first NBA game in Boston. Then came Games 5 and 7 against Philadelphia, playoff nights that carried a nervous current from the empty arena before the game through the final buzzer and beyond.
Tuesday was different. It was Game 4 of 82 against a winless Brooklyn team on the second night of a back-to-back in late October.
I had wondered what covering the Celtics would look like without the obvious stakes. What fills the hours before tip when nobody is returning from a devastating injury and the season isn’t hanging in the balance? Does the Garden still feel magical when it’s just another game?
The answer arrived five quarters later.
The Celtics beat the Nets 125-124 in overtime on a Tatum buzzer-beater.
So much for that experiment.
Before the Garden becomes the Garden
There are two versions of TD Garden on game day.
The first belongs to employees, players, media members and a handful of children who are trying really hard not to freak out while Jayson Tatum shoots jumpers 15 feet away from them.
The second begins when the lights go down and more than 19,000 people who spent the day living entirely separate lives suddenly agree on one very simple thing: they want the Celtics to win.
If overtime gives them five extra minutes to want it? Even better.
Getting to be part of the first version still feels wildly unbelievable to me.
On Tuesday night, I picked up my media credential without an issue, which was an encouraging start. Then I left my backpack on while walking through the metal detector. My credential wouldn’t scan at the next checkpoint. After an employee helped me through, I entered an elevator and missed my floor because I was too busy trying to look like someone who knew where he was going.
I had started hot. The backpack, scanner and elevator cooled me off quickly. The elevator continued toward the balcony. I got off when it felt socially acceptable, then hurried back downstairs.
Only after getting down to the court did I allow myself to breathe and look around.
Mike Conley was greeting his children near the court, performing a different handshake with each of them. Sam Hauser picked up his son and held him in front of Derrick White as if a toddler might help provide the resistance Brooklyn would be looking for later that night.
White shot over him anyway.
Luka Garza’s father sat courtside saying hello to players coming and going. Josh Minott caught up with former Celtics teammates before the game, carrying the unmistakable energy of someone visiting coworkers after changing jobs. Everyone looked genuinely happy to see him. Nobody asked him to cover a shift.
I also met Ben Vallis and Jake Issenberg from First to the Floor, who had traveled from Australia to watch the Celtics up close and in person. Before the game, the three of us somehow ended up discussing the American dap, a social interaction with roughly 35 possible endings and no agreed-upon rules.
Ben and Jake explained that Australia’s version is more standardized. In the United States, some people go palm-first, cupping your hand and looking for that clean pop. Others lead with their fingers, which begins a brief dance where both sets of fingers creep toward each other and attempt to bridge into Part 2. Then there are the people who clasp your hand and pull you in for a hug without warning. How are you supposed to know who wants what?!
I know this seems like a random anecdote, but please remember this. It will matter later.
Twelve minutes before tip, the Garden remained strangely empty, perhaps a product of it being an ordinary night. A child held up a sign reading “MY FIRST CELTICS GAME” just before the lights went down. A few more minutes passed and the building started filling in around her.
I thought about all the times I had been the person waiting for that moment from the other side. For most of my life, the Garden began when I reached my seat. I never considered the hours before it, when the players are shooting in near silence and the people who make the whole production work are quietly getting everything into place.
On this ordinary Tuesday, I could watch the Garden become itself.
Pregame, Mazzulla said escaping Chicago healthy and keeping everyone at 27 minutes or fewer gave him flexibility. González’s first-quarter minutes Monday didn’t guarantee him the same opportunity Tuesday.
“There’s no first-quarter limitations, so to speak,” Mazzulla said. “It could look completely different today.”
It did.
At times, the Celtics looked like a team playing for the second consecutive night. Their reads were late, shots caught the front rim and Brooklyn kept making difficult baskets.
Nolan Traore scored nine first-quarter points, prompting a quick apology from the Celtics writer who had asked before the game who he was (it wasn’t Ben or Jake). Mazzulla searched for energy, giving early opportunities to González, Scheierman and Garza. A brief confrontation involving Robinson woke the crowd up more than Boston’s offense had.
Brooklyn led 61-56 at halftime. The Celtics had shot 2-for-16 from three, committed 10 turnovers and allowed 30 points in the paint.
The back-to-back had given Mazzulla information. Now Boston had to do something with it.
Give the game what it needs
Mazzulla has talked often about giving the game what it needs. It can sound philosophical until you watch a team spend an entire half trying to solve a very practical problem.
Sometimes the game needs shooting. Sometimes it needs size. Sometimes it needs somebody to dive onto the floor before everyone else decides they should do the same.
On Tuesday, Boston needed several things at once.
The first was Tatum getting downhill.
His outside shot wasn’t carrying the offense, so he stopped asking it to. Instead, he kept attacking, drawing contact and putting Brooklyn’s defense under pressure. The free-throw line became Boston’s most reliable source of offense.
Tatum finished with a career-high 18 made free throws on 22 attempts, part of a 40-point night that never felt as simple as the number suggests.
“He was just giving the game exactly what it needed,” Mazzulla said. “He stayed in the present moment, and we got to see his greatness.”
Being present has become important to Tatum. Before tearing his Achilles, he believed the championship Celtics had a long runway together. The injury changed that.
“I never took the game for granted,” Tatum said. “Maybe I took tomorrow for granted.”
On Tuesday, he accepted what the game offered. His jumper came and went, but Brooklyn couldn’t keep him away from the rim, so he kept returning there.
The Celtics also needed effort from somewhere other than their best player.
Hauser helped change the temperature. He threw himself onto the floor to save a possession, then hit one of Boston’s eight third-quarter threes. Tatum gave the Celtics their first lead, and another Hauser three sent them into the fourth ahead 86-82. The crowd had been waiting for a reason to join the game, and a few floor burns gave it one.
This was the answer to one of my questions coming into the night.
A playoff crowd arrives prepared. It carries the stakes through the doors. A Tuesday crowd sometimes needs the game to introduce itself first.
Once it did, the Garden sounded familiar.
Mazzulla had also been waiting to see how his team would respond to its first prolonged stretch of lousy basketball.
“That’s kind of the first time this year where we weren’t playing well,” he said. “I wanted to see how we stick together. I wanted to see how we connect with each other, how we adapt to that.”
Mazzulla said before the game that everyone needed to remain ready because the group could change from one night to the next. Hauser and Garza made that point for him.
Garza’s most important stint began with 6:40 left in the third and Boston trailing by seven. He remained on the floor as the Celtics closed the quarter on a 16-5 run, then returned with 3:02 left in overtime. His two points and four rebounds were modest, but Boston outscored Brooklyn by 17 during his minutes. On a night when Mazzulla promised the rotation could change, Garza gave him a reason to keep coming back.
Boston survived the non-Tatum minutes, which mattered because he eventually played 42:20 on the second night of a back-to-back. Mazzulla said the staff plans for nights like this by building rest into the rotation and trusting everyone else to protect it.
For Tatum, the workload represented something more.
“I worked really, really, really, really hard to come back a certain type of player,” he said. “To be reliable like I was before I got injured.”
He briefly left in the fourth after feeling a stinger, realized he was fine and returned. Last spring, Tatum admitted, something like that might have occupied his thoughts. Now he can cut, drive and change direction without constantly monitoring his body.
“Something in my mind clicks,” he said. “Like, ‘Oh, that feeling is really starting to feel like pre-injury.’”
He gets excited about those moments whether the shot goes in or not. Brooklyn gave him plenty of opportunities to test that progress.
Meanwhile, Michael Porter Jr. played like somebody had spent every available 2K attribute point on shooting. He finished with 27 points and 12 rebounds, punishing Boston whenever it gave him room. Julius Randle added 24 points. The Nets never seemed interested in fulfilling their assigned role as the tired team’s cooperative second-night opponent.
Mazzulla continued adjusting. Queta replaced Robinson, fouled out and forced Robinson back into the game. Tatum briefly went to the bench before returning. White cut through Brooklyn’s defense for an and-one dunk that shook the building.
Boston appeared to have survived everything when Robinson went to the line late in regulation.
Ben, Jake and I began moving toward the elevator. From where we stood, the game was over. Robinson only needed to make one free throw, or Boston needed to defend one possession with almost no time remaining.
He missed both.
Brown Jr. tied the game.
The elevator would have to wait.
The night that refused to end
Overtime had a strange energy.
A noticeable portion of the crowd had already left, convinced of the same thing I had been confident enough to type into my notes. The building sounded thinner, but the people who remained seemed to understand that they had some extra work to do. There were fewer voices, and each one was trying to cover for somebody already planning which bar to hit downtown.
The Celtics had fewer options, too. Queta was gone. Robinson looked exhausted. Mazzulla returned to Garza, trusting the player who had spent the night running, rebounding and volunteering his body for all the unpleasant assignments.
The game could have ended several more times.
With 6.1 seconds left and Brooklyn ahead by one, Brown Jr. missed at the rim and the ball went out of bounds off the Nets. The initial ruling gave Boston possession and a chance to win the game.
Brooklyn challenged. The review found a loose-ball foul on Garza, giving the Nets the ball back beneath their own basket. At that point, Brooklyn didn’t need another shot. The Nets could inbound the ball, wait for Boston to foul and potentially make two free throws. The Celtics would likely be left trying to force a second overtime with a three.
Instead, Brown Jr. caught the inbound pass and attempted a contested layup over George.
He missed.
The same rookie who had extended the game at the end of regulation had just given Boston another chance to end it. George secured the rebound, and Mazzulla called timeout with 2.3 seconds remaining.
It seemed there would be no second overtime. Boston’s next shot would either win the game or send everyone home wondering why a Tuesday night against Brooklyn had hurt this much.
There are moments when analysis becomes a slightly ridiculous pursuit. Everybody knows where the ball is going. The coaches know, the defense knows and the thousands of people standing around the court know.
The interesting part is everything that still has to happen after that.
Brooklyn knew where the ball was going. The plan was to keep Noah Clowney, its bigger defender, attached to Tatum and avoid switching. Brown Jr. switched anyway.
Tatum created separation from the rookie, took two quick dribbles to his left and rose from 17 feet as Keon Ellis came over to contest. For an instant, the entire night hung there.
Then the shot fell.
The Garden erupted. Ben, Jake and I exchanged three consecutive daps without a single thumb-related incident. I was in too much of a euphoric state to confirm whether our technique was perfect or not, but under the circumstances, it didn’t really matter.
Tatum’s teammates mobbed him near the baseline. He had hit plenty of game-winners before, but this was his first since tearing his Achilles.
“It was a hell of a feeling,” Tatum said. “Just kind of getting back to doing things that I used to do before I was injured, sharing that with my teammates on the court, seeing how excited they were for me.”
Tatum finished with 40 points and eight assists. He carried the offense through its ugliest stretches, trusted teammates while they searched for their footing and ended the game himself when there was no time left for anything more complicated.
In short, he gave the game what it needed.
So did Hauser when the Celtics needed someone to throw himself onto the floor. Garza did it when the rotation required another big man. Scheierman did it by doing Baylor things. George did it while Tatum rested.
The crowd eventually did it, too.
The other side of the rope
I had arrived hoping to understand the ordinary work of an NBA season.
The media side has its own rhythm. Get through the entrance. Find the correct elevator. Watch warmups. Write down anything that might matter. Delete half of it. Try to understand the other half before somebody hits a three with 0.2 seconds left and ruins the story you thought you were writing.
For most of my life, I wondered what it would feel like to be down there. To report on the Celtics instead of simply cheering for them. To sit on the other side of the rope and try to bring readers closer to everything happening beyond it.
The funny part is that the other side doesn’t make the game feel smaller or more clinical. If anything, proximity keeps revealing more reasons to care.
You notice the handshake Conley shares with one of his children. You see Tatum pause his own special night to help a teammate do better on the next play. You hear the building slowly realize it has wandered into a great game.
Then you stay late enough to watch Tatum win it.
Mazzulla said the experience was valuable because it showed the Celtics who they are and what they still need to work on. That’s probably the healthiest way to view Game 4 of 82. Boston shouldn’t have needed overtime to beat Brooklyn. They missed too many shots, surrendered too many offensive rebounds and mishandled a situation that should have ended the game in regulation.
They also stayed connected when very little was working. Those truths can share the same night. Mazzulla certainly intends to make the Celtics sit through both of them when they watch the film.
Maybe my mistake was separating games into the important ones and the ordinary ones before they happened.
Tatum said his injury made him wonder whether he once took tomorrow for granted. Tuesday began as one of those tomorrows. Game 4. A winless opponent. The second night of a back-to-back in October. Five quarters later, he was standing near the baseline while his teammates celebrated a shot he once spent months wondering whether his body would allow him to make again.
On the train home, I looked down and realized I was still wearing my credential. I had made it through the wrong elevator, two missed Robinson free throws, a surprise overtime and my first ordinary regular-season assignment.
The credential probably could have gone back into my bag at that point.
I left it on a little longer.
