It became clear midway through the third quarter Monday night this was not going to a feel-good night for the Celtics.
Sure, Brad Stevens' team did go on a 13-0 run to cut the Pelicans' lead to three with 50 seconds to go before New Orleans ultimately closed out its 115-109 win. And, of course, actually playing in front of actual fans at TD Garden was something special. (This was evident with Brad Stevens' getting emotional when talking about the return of a crowd after the game.)
But with the Celtics' needing to make up for Jaylen Brown's absence with a very Marcus Smart effort from Marcus Smart, along with Evan Fournier's 0-for-10 debut, this never felt right.
Why? Simple. Zion Williamson.
The naysayers for the former No. 1 overall pick will point to his 280 pounds at the age of 20 years old and suggest this body-type simply isn't sustainable. He is too short. He is too heavy. He is too uncoventional.
Here is the reality: Williamson is the kind of transcendent talent everyone in that building should have soaked in.
The box score won't tell this tale. The New Orleans' star finished with 28 points on 11-of-22 shooting to go along with eight rebounds. But it was what Williamson did in the third quarter that single-handedly did in the Celtics.
This was the college kid going down to the park to torture some eighth-graders.
To Stan Van Gundy's credit, he understood this was the rare opportunity to let one guy take over a game with simply superior physical presence and skill than anyone else on the floor. One after another, Williamson kept getting those isolations at the top of the key, with the likes of Jayson Tatum, Luke Kornet, and Evan Fournier helpless as the New Orleans' forward finished off one drive after another.
Then came some adjustments. Help. Zones. Those only led to Williamson distributing assists to wide-open jump-shooters. (This was an image Tatum could take a lesson from.)
The dominance built the Pelicans' lead to 17 points, with the Celtics turning in a too-little-too-late comeback. Sure, Smart did slow down Williamson a bit late in the fourth with a bit of undersized grit and guile. That, however, was nothing more than a few minutes of feel-good Marcus before Smart sealed New Orleans' win with his ejection.
The postgame might be filled with what-might-have-beens. But really there was only one definitive takeaway from the Celtics' latest uncomfortable outing ... What is: Zion Williamson, the kind of player that simply needs to be appreciated more than most.