Shortly after Tuesday night’s statement win over the Philadelphia 76ers, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla sat at the podium and posed the same question he has continued to ask his team: Who do we want to be?
“This was an opportunity and a test. Playing against one of the best teams in the league, a highly talented team,” Mazzulla said, “Now the next question is: Who do you want to be? We play in less than 24 hours. Who do you want to be tomorrow? Who do you want to be when we go up against a well-coached Toronto team?”
The excuses were there for the taking.
The Celtics were wrapping up a six-day, four-game road trip that took them through four different cities and approximately 2,400 miles of travel. They had crossed the border into Canada, going through customs in the early morning hours. It was the second night of a back-to-back and their third game in four nights, coming off an emotional, hard-fought win over the 76ers. They were also without Paul George, who was resting.
Their opponent, meanwhile, was a Toronto team that could have been easy to overlook. The Raptors were without their star duo of Kawhi Leonard and Scottie Barnes and entered the matchup winless against teams with a winning record (now 0-5).
There was no shortage of reasons for the Celtics to come out flat. And for a while, Toronto gave them every reason to fold.
The Raptors connected on 10 three-pointers in the first quarter, tying a franchise record for the most in a single frame. The Celtics found themselves trailing by 22 points, with fatigue, poor shooting, and a red-hot opponent putting their perfect road trip in jeopardy.
But they didn’t succumb to any of it. They didn’t mail it in when the deficit ballooned to 22 or let the circumstances dictate their response. Instead, they answered Mazzulla’s question by showing the kind of determination and resilience that has characterized their start to the season.
The victory extended their winning streak to five games, marking their second five-game winning streak of the season. That’s already as many as they had all of last season. It also improved their record to 10-2, the best in the Eastern Conference, while their 22-point comeback marked the second-largest in the Mazzulla era.
“We had every excuse in the world,” Derrick White said. “Just that DNA. When you put that Celtic uniform on, it’s go out there and win. Every person that came in there — we might not have had it at the beginning of the game, but we just found a way to find something.”
After falling behind by 22 points with 5:24 remaining in the second quarter, the Celtics closed the half on a 17-2 run to cut Toronto’s lead to seven. Jayson Tatum fueled the surge, scoring 11 consecutive points before setting up Baylor Scheierman for a three-pointer. He scored or assisted on 14 straight Celtics points during the run.
“Middle of the second quarter, it’s a 22-point game; it could go either way,” Mazzulla said. “You can kind of mail it in and just say second night of a back-to-back, blah, blah, blah. We cut it to seven, that’s a turning point.”
Boston carried that momentum into the second half, particularly on the defensive end. The Celtics limited Toronto to 32 points after halftime, the fewest by any team in a half this season, while forcing 11 turnovers. The Raptors managed just 19 points in the third quarter and 13 in the fourth.
And when the game came down to the final minutes, the Celtics once again delivered when it mattered most. After falling behind 89-83 with 5:13 remaining in the fourth quarter, Boston responded with a 15-4 run to secure the win and improve to 5-1 in clutch games this season, with contributions coming from all over.
The Celtics’ five clutch wins, defined by the NBA as the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or any overtime period when the score differential is five points or fewer, are tied for the second-most in the league.
The 22-point comeback capped a perfect 4-0 road trip and offered perhaps the clearest answer yet to the question Mazzulla has continued to pose: The Celtics want to be a team that finds a way to win, regardless of the circumstances.
“It means something, and it means nothing at the same time,” Mazzulla said of the gutsy win. “We have to be able to take the psychological lessons that we learned from it: the poise, the patience, the understanding of the game of runs. And, at the same time, we have to know that we’ve got to play better. So it’s both of those things. But there are moments throughout the season that your team shows a certain level of mentality that you want to have, and they showed that tonight.”
Through 12 games, the Celtics are beginning to show exactly who they want to be.
