The Boston Celtics accomplished their two missions in the nation’s capital, first by attending their White House visit and then by defeating the Washington Wizards in their NBA Cup matchup Friday night.
Boston shot an uncharacteristic 11-of-46 (23.9%) from 3-point range, giving Washington every chance possible to make it away with its second home win in seven attempts. But with 4:44 through the third quarter, as the Wizards fought to keep the Celtics from finding answers offensively, head coach Joe Mazzulla picked up a technical foul that may or may not have been intentional.
“It changed the energy in the arena, did you feel that?” Mazzulla told reporters, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage.
Celtics assistant coaches Sam Cassell and Tony Dobins both had to restrain Mazzulla from the officials, but it was all a part of the plan. Mazzulla’s unique tactic, which he last resorted to during an Oct. 28 win over the Milwaukee Bucks, returned. Mazzulla’s emotions, at first glance, resembled a fired-up, jiu-jitsu-practicing head coach looking to send a message.
Well, the message was received, both by the officials who issued a technical to Mazzulla and the Celtics, who went on a 12-4 run to take a 75-70 lead over the Wizards with a little over a minute left before the fourth quarter started.
“It wasn’t really about energizing the team,” Mazzulla said. “I think it was just manipulating the environment. I thought that’s kind of what the environment needed at the time, and you just have to make those calls from time to time. We were playing pretty good. It wasn’t like I needed to do that but I felt like it was a way to manipulate the environment.”
What exactly did Mazzulla mean by that?
“Noise, chaos, anxiety, a little bit of everything,” Mazzulla said.
Whether or not Mazzulla’s mind games were part of Boston’s plan of attack or not, the third-year head coach was intentional with an interesting, but on-brand, tactic in the fourth quarter — which we saw during last year’s regular-season tournament.
Mazzulla called a timeout with 5.6 seconds, ahead 106-96, as the game was already a sealed deal. The reason? Mazzulla aimed to get Boston a more favorable point differential, currently behind the Hawks (2-1, minus-1) and ahead of the Cavaliers (1-1, plus-15) with a 2-1 group-play record and minus-14 point differential. With over $500,000 in reward money, plus a trip to Las Vegas, which the Celtics missed out on last season, Mazzulla and the defending champions are all in.
“If there’s something to win, I think we wanna win it,” Brown said, per NBC Sports Boston. “So, we dropped one against Atlanta on our home floor. We wanna make up for it.”
If that means some of Mazzulla’s homemade mayhem, then so be it.
