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Joe Mazzulla’s Boston Celtics were +17.0 favorites on Friday night against the Washington Wizards. Many thought that the Cs were going to run roughshod over their struggling opponents on the court where they’ve lost just thrice this season. Instead of that happening, Boston, which has the best record in the NBA, trailed for most of the way before pulling out a hard-earned win.
It took a big scoring night from both Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porzingis to rally the Celtics to the win. Mazzulla’s charges detonated a 36-16 explosion in the third quarter to turn a 71-64 halftime deficit into a 100-87 advantage leading into the fourth quarter.
The Wizards, however, recovered from the beatdown and proceeded to push the Celtics right until the last minute. Joe Mazzulla had to pull out all the stops to help his team to victory. After the game, he was asked about how Boston managed to come out as the winner despite an underwhelming performance:
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“Have you ever seen Spider-Man? Into the Spider-Verse? 20 different Spider-Mans? That’s like our team.”
The movie Mazzulla talked about was a version of the popular Spider-Man franchise. In the story, Brooklyn native Miles Morales found that there are different other Spider-Men scattered across other universes. Peter Parker, the original web-crawler, was only one of the many who had the same skills and abilities as Morales.
Joe Mazzulla couldn’t be blamed for describing the Boston Celtics as a team with different identities. On most nights, they seem to be unbeatable. There are also times that they can be frustratingly inept and teams with much lesser firepower can beat them.
On Friday night, that nearly happened against the Washington Wizards who just traded Daniel Gafford, their best big man. Richaun Holmes, Gafford’s replacement, couldn’t even suit up. Boston’s fastbreak defense, which topped the NBA before the Wizards game, gave up 26 transition points. Celtics fans at TD Garden must have thought they were watching a different team hosting Washington.
Joe Mazzulla’s team, like Spider-Man, got the job done
Despite their struggles for most of the game, Joe Mazzulla’s team eked out a hard-fought win. They lost all but one quarter and still emerged as the winners. The Spider-Men in the movie Boston’s coach talked about, struggled to beat the villain called the “Kingpin.” On more than one occasion, they seemed to have lost. But like the Celtics, the said superheroes stepped up to get the win.
Still, it’s more than a little concerning that the Celtics have these kinds of lulls where they can’t overcome seemingly powerless foes. They lost 114-105 to the LA Lakers who didn’t have LeBron James and Anthony Davis a week ago. An even more embarrassing defeat was about to happen against the Wizards before they pulled through.
Joe Mazzulla is taking the roller-coaster ride in stride. He had this to say about another of Boston’s befuddling performances:
“I don't think they're bad habits. I do think there have been some moments of slippage throughout games. What I care about more is our approach to those slippages.”
The Boston Celtics responded just in time to grab the win. It remains to be seen if they can continue the same trend and get away with it like the way Spider-Man usually does in movies.
