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Tim BontempsESPN
BOSTON: All it took for the Boston Celtics to finish their long seven-game season with a win Friday night was a 17-point comeback to force overtime, and the best game of Jayson Tatum’s career.
The 23-year-old All-Star finished with a maximum of 53 points in the race, including 35 in the second half and overtime, to lead the Celtics to a 145-136 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, which allowed in Boston escape of a The game was maintained for most of the regulation, only to give a late advantage to send the game to overtime.
Tatum, 23, became the Celtics’ youngest player to score 50 in a game, beating Larry Bird, who did so at 26 years old.
“Scoring 50 is an important thing in this league and especially at this age,” Tatum said. “It will be a night I always remember, and we got the win, a big win.
“All the wins right now are great.”
Friday’s game was, in many ways, a microcosm of the entire Boston season. Playing again without Evan Fournier, who has missed the last few games due to NBA safety and health protocols and will not travel with the Celtics on his impending three-game trip to the West Coast, the lack of depth of Boston was a problem.
Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart and Kemba Walker played at least 39 minutes, were the only four players in double figures and added 120 of Boston’s 145 points. And, for a team that has been incredibly inconsistent all season, the Celtics fought back for long stretches of that game against one of the worst teams in the NBA.
These struggles included going back 14 points at the end of the first quarter, which caused coach Brad Stevens to make a very unusual play and return to the entirety of his initial 5 to start the second.
“To be honest, I didn’t want them to go 30 in the half,” Stevens said after a timeout. “I wasn’t going in the right direction and I just wanted to keep a distance. I just had to hang up.”
While it didn’t work out exactly as Stevens intended, as Boston reached the halfway round again, the Celtics finally returned to the game with a rain of triples in the second half. After going 5 for 15 from deep part of the first half, Boston went for 14 to 27 behind the arc in the second half and overtime, including Tatum, who shot 11 to 17 overall at halftime , passing 5 for-8 behind the arc.
“When we got back to third, it looked like I had one,” Stevens said. “And the boys did a good job finding him.
“Tatum has been super special tonight … Don’t confuse his quiet demeanor with not being a competitor. He’s a competitor.”
Boston needed every ounce of that competitiveness to win it. The Celtics left an 11-point lead, with just over 3 minutes left in regulation, as the Wolves closed out the fourth quarter with a 15-4 run, with the limit of a D’Angelo Russell with 3 points with 8.6 seconds left to finish sending the game to overtime.
But instead of being defeated by the way the quarter ended, Boston responded with another run to leave the game out of play in overtime. The Celtics took advantage of Tatum’s attention to open first Brown and then Walker (twice) for triples in three consecutive possessions to open the game and give Boston an advantage he would not give up.
“Keep the course,” Smart said when asked how Boston was able to recover in overtime. “We had some plays that could really have changed for us and we couldn’t win along the way and we went down. We just decided and kept talking and I think we told ourselves we should keep moving forward and keep fighting for any adversity we face.” .