Celtics
The Celtics’ win felt less like a victory and more like a very narrow escape for a team that already had some uncomfortable questions to answer.
Jayson Tatum’s big night helped the Celtics escape with a harrowing 120-119 win over the Pelicans on Sunday.
Here are the takeaways.
1. Jayson Tatum lifted the Celtics to a win.
One of the crucial things about having a genuine superstar on a contending team is that when you inevitably hit the part of the season where things aren’t going right — the doldrums of the regular season when a team might otherwise might rattle off a number of losses in a row — there’s one player you can go to who can take matters into his own hands.
The Celtics have a player like that in Tatum, who rebounded from one of his worst performances of the season against the Kings on Friday to put up 38 badly needed points and 11 rebounds against the Pelicans.
Like the rest of his team, Tatum couldn’t make 3-pointers (2-for-10), but he got to the line 10 times and made eight of them (we’ll discuss his two misses shortly) and he went 12-for-20 inside the arc, scoring in a variety of creative ways.
Maybe most notably, he had what should have been the game-icing play with just over a minute remaining. Flying to the ball after a miss by Dejounte Murray, Tatum snagged the rebound and raced up the floor with two Pelicans in hot pursuit. All three players flew out of bounds as Tatum missed the layup, but Tatum hustled back to the ball and grabbed the offensive rebound, slamming home a two-handed dunk.
The Celtics are mired in a slump, which is both an odd thing to say about a team that is 28-11 but also is borderline undeniable when you watch how they are playing. If Tatum can keep the team alive…