NEW YORK — “Sam had a big steal,” said Payton Pritchard.
As Terance Mann dribbled the ball up early in the fourth quarter, Sam Hauser picked him up full-court. The score was 90-90. The 2-11 Brooklyn Nets had battled hard to keep themselves in the game as the Boston Celtics, a turnover machine in the first half, scrambled to find their footing.
Boston has been picking up full-court more often this season, upping its ball pressure to force more turnovers. “It's definitely an adjustment, but that's kind of what Joe wants,” Hauser said. “So, kind of have to get used to it. And sometimes it's on the fly, just like tonight, so just gotta roll with it.”
It’s not something Hauser is used to.
“Just because I'm not in that position a lot, so it's like, 'All right, well, I gotta go do this,’” he said.
Sam Hauser helped Celtics seal hard-fought win in Brooklyn
Yet as Mann jogged up the court, Hauser stuck with him stride for stride. And when Mann drove into him near the halfway line, he ran into a brick wall. The Nets wing fell to the ground, losing possession, and Hauser scrambled to get the seal.
He found Neemias Queta, ran to the wing, and the Celtics big man faked a dribble hand-off to Hauser before putting the ball on the floor and throwing down a ferocious dunk. Boston went up 92-90.
“Got some stops, Neemi had a nice dunk, Sam hit a big shot, and some momentum plays went our way,” Pritchard said of the Celtics’ fourth-quarter run.
Hauser’s triple came less than a minute later. It gave the Celtics a seven-point lead, and Jordi Fernandez called a timeout. From the time of his steal onward, Boston never trailed again.
“It’s a tale of two halves,” Joe Mazzulla said post-game.
Brooklyn started the game 5-of-6 from three-point range. But it was the Celtics’ own carelessness that put them in an early hole on Tuesday night.
“Just being careless with the ball,” said Jaylen Brown. “And that was all of us, but especially me. Just probably thinking too much, trying to get guys going, but if anything, just hang on to the ball. Trying to get off it, trying to move it, that's what we want to do, but sometimes those teams are in the gaps, [and] it's better to just get a missed shot attempt than a turnover.”
The Celtics averaged just 11.6 turnovers per game (Tuesday night included). Through the first half against the Nets, they coughed up the ball 12 times, and Brooklyn had 20 fast break points to Boston’s zero.
“They did a good job of blitzing and being up,” said Mazzulla. “We made some good reads, but they test you. You got to do it all the time. So, if you have to throw 50 passes, you got to be able to be great on 48 to 50 of them, and we just weren't on some of those. And so it just left us for an area to get better at.”
As Brooklyn jumped passing lanes and capitalized on silly mistakes, the Celtics crumbled. Brown played only 10:27 first-half minutes, as he, Derrick White, and Anfernee Simons each had three turnoverd.
Boston went into the half up one, but it was one of the messiest halves of basketball they have churned out all season. So, when the third quarter got going, they made the necessary changes.
“To start, we didn't turn the ball over, so they weren't able to get out in transition,” said Mazzulla. “Which I said, they had 12 in the first half. They had 25 points in transition. I don't know how many points they had off our turnovers, but there had to be a correlation there. So, it started there. We didn't turn it over.
“Once we got it into a five-on-five, we took away a couple of the things that they do really well in the half-court, and we held them to one shot. So, I still think they crushed us on the shot margin, but I thought we did a better job in the second half of kind of getting that up with the turnovers and limiting them to one shot and then us getting some rebounds.”
The Nets still battled their way through the third, but the Celtics stuck with them. As the final frame got underway, it was a four-point game. And the Nets even took a lead early in the quarter.
Yet Hauser’s quiet heroics helped save the day.
Hauser played 11:42 in the fourth, subbing out only when Mazzulla decided to (mostly) bench his starters in the final few minutes. His defense on Mann and impressive rebounding efforts shaped the Celtics’ surge. What was once a tie ball game quickly shifted into a double-digit Boston victory.
“He's great, and it's a credit to him,” said Mazzulla. “We all know that he's been in a little bit of a shooting slump, but he's not defined by that. I thought his defense was great, I thought his rebounding was really good, and he had a big-time steal at half-court that I thought kind of changed the game. So, it's a credit to him just continuing to chip away at it.”
Just two nights ago, Hauser was barely a factor against the LA Clippers. He played just 6:45 as Jordan Walsh and Baylor Scheierman earned a bulk of the wing minutes.
A monster shooting slump (he was on a 5-of-34 stretch heading into Brooklyn) had left leeway for Mazzulla to turn to other options. But Hauser bided his time.
“Of course, it's hard, but you kind of just have to, like you said, roll with the punches and take advantage of the time you are out there and still try to help the team win,” he said. “Try to be external and don't be internal. It's hard in the moment.”
He wants to play. Everyone wants to play. But that comes second.
Winning comes first.
“Don't think about yourself. Think about the team first. If you're thinking about yourself, then your head's not in the right place,” Hauser said. “And yeah, I mean, it's gonna be a lot of that this year, I feel like. Just changing lineups, rotations, just trying to figure out what works. And the other game, a different lineup was working, so he rolled with that, and that's cool.
“You just have to trust it. And then, like tonight, we played a whole different lineup for a good chunk of that third quarter that maybe hasn't played together a lot, and it worked. So, he just rolled with it. So yeah, just making the most of the time you're out there.”
Tuesday night was Hauser’s turn. The New Orleans Pelicans came was Josh Minott’s turn. The win over the Orlando Magic was Hugo Gonzalez’s and Walsh’s turn. Soon, Scheierman will win Boston a game.
That’s simply the nature of this year’s Celtics team. And on a night when the Nets pushed them until the final few minutes, they swill squeaked out a 14-point win.
And that’s the one stat that matters.
“Just playing team basketball,” Brown said. “Some guys made some big contributions and just made some shots, but we was able to get some stops. Think we held them to like 15 points in the fourth quarter or something like that. I think that was a big reason for our run, how we closed the game.”