Jayson Tatum hit a game-tying three with less than three seconds left in regulation and Kristaps Porzingis took care of business from there, lifting the Boston Celtics to a thrilling overtime-victory over the New York Knicks.
Porzingis, who finished with a game-high 34 points against the team that drafted him in 2015, matched his career best with eight three-pointers, including the go-ahead bucket with less than one minute remaining. The 119-117 victory caps off a regular-season sweep of the Knicks, and marks a franchise-record 33rd road win for the Celtics.
Statistics aside, Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla was quick to point out after the game that in the grand scheme of things, Tuesday night’s win was relatively meaningless.
“I mean, it means nothing,” said Mazzulla, whose team remains four games behind the Cleveland Cavaliers for first place in the Eastern Conference standings with just three games left to play. “If anything, it’s more dangerous for us thinking, one, that we’re going to get to the second round. We may not get there. You have to surrender to that, that it may not go the way that you want it. There’s so much that needs to happen before that, and if you don’t handle what you’ve done against someone else, then that can actually be more detrimental to you psychologically. So it all depends on how we continue to get better as a team.”
For Porzingis, the 11-for-19 shooting performance and career-high eight three-pointers was somewhat unexpected, and not just because he had sat out Boston’s last game while continuing to recover from a respiratory illness. The 7-foot, 4-inch Latvian was also dealt the tireless task of defending five-time All-Star Karl-Anthony Towns, who matched Porzingis’s scoring effort with 34 points.
Porzingis’s most notable bucket — outside his go-ahead three in the game’s final minute — was a deep trey from the Knicks logo near midcourt. Porzingis collected a loose ball that had gotten away from Tatum, and let the prayer fly despite seven seconds still remaining on the shot clock.
“The ball rolled to me, and I said this is destiny,” Porzingis told reporters of the shot after the game. “This morning in shootaround and pregame, my shot was way off, but that’s how it works out a lot of times. Once I saw the ball going in, I just let it fly without thinking, and it was a good night.”
Tatum, per usual, also had a big night for the Celtics, finishing with 32 points to complement his seven rebounds and five assists. The six-time All-Star came up clutch toward the end of regulation, scoring 12 of Boston’s final 16 points — including the game-tying three-pointer with less than three seconds to play.
Jrue Holiday (16 points, four rebounds, three assists) and Derrick White (14 points, eight rebounds, nine assists) also scored in double figures for the Celtics, while Payton Pritchard (eight points, five rebounds) and Sam Hauser (seven points) played well off the bench.
Perhaps the only negative to come from the night was Jaylen Brown having sat out both the fourth quarter and overtime as he continues to play through a bone bruise in his right knee. Brown started the contest alongside Boston’s preferred starting five, scoring six points and grabbing five rebounds in 22 minutes of action.
“We just got what we needed to get out of him as he continues to push himself and test himself,” Mazzulla said of Brown after the game. “We’ve still got games left, so we got what we needed to get, what we needed to see, and we just continue to move forward.”
The Celtics won’t have long to celebrate their overtime victory as they play on back-to-back nights for the final time this season.
Boston (59-20) will travel to Orlando to face the Magic (39-40) in its final road game of the season, with hopes of besting the 2015-16 Golden State Warriors (34) for the most road wins of all time. To do that, the Celtics will have to beat a Magic squad with wins in each of their last three games.
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