Celtics refocus, stop another late collapse to secure a playoff berth

The Boston Celtics started taking things for granted of late, and it’s showed. But against the Indiana Pacers, they found a way to win.

The Boston Celtics nearly blew it again, but came together and beat back the Indiana Pacers’ comeback attempt, staving off another late collapse for the 114-111 win on Tuesday night.

After losing four of their previous five, it was a critical victory.

Following Thursday’s matchup with the Milwaukee Bucks, Boston’s schedule gets a lot lighter than it has been of late, with only five of their remaining 18 games against teams with winning records.

While it’s very likely the Celtics will finish the season as a third seed with the Toronto Raptors a full three games ahead in the standings, the team needed to come away from the Mar. 11 contest with a win for purposes of morale.

“I think we probably needed it,” said head coach Brad Stevens via the Boston Herald’s Steve Bulpett.

“We probably need to have something like that happen, go down three and find a way to win. It’s probably a good thing for our team in the long run. I mean, it’s like we’ve got to get better in the middle of quarter and we’ve got to get better at the end of quarters. But we probably needed that.”

“That was hard. That’s a good thing,” he added.

The Celtics managed to secure a playoff berth with the win as well.

While that might seem like a minor issue to comparatively spoiled Boston fans, for point guard Kemba Walker, it’s only the third time in his professional career he can look forward to playing past the regular season.

“Not celebrate, but it does mean a lot,” said Jayson Tatum said postgame (via MassLive’s John Karalis).

“I’ve been fortunate enough to make the playoffs every year since I’ve been in the league. I realize that it’s not easy. Everybody doesn’t make the playoffs. Kemba has only made it a couple of times in his career. It’s not easy, so I don’t take it for granted”

If anything can be blamed beyond injury and the difficulty of an 82-game schedule for Boston’s recent run of losses, it’s taking things for granted.

Taking for granted the ascent of Tatum to superstar status, and taking possessions for granted when up big have become problematic habits.

Instead of leaning into a lead or making aggressive efforts to get open or pressure defenses, Boston had become a little complacent — and those recent, late-game collapses were a testament to how much room there is to behave that way in the NBA.

In other words, not much.

“You could tell, when it went south, you could tell our guys were going to really compete, and Gordon got everybody together after they got the 3-point play,” noted Stevens via Karalis. “The next couple possessions we flew around, we were engaged, we were trying everything we could to win the game, and that’s all you can ask.”

That was the foundation for the Celtics’ early success, and helped them weather the toughest stretch of the schedule in January and February without much slippage, even as the team was relatively thin from injuries.

If Boston is to make a successful finish and strong start to the postseason, they’ll need to recapture this kind of energy on a regular basis.

They may be well-built for the postseason, and may end up favored no matter who they end up drawing as first- and even second-round opponents.

But if they take things for granted — whether making it to the playoffs in the first place, their effort levels or each other — it won’t matter much in the end.

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