BOSTON — The regular season is a battle against monotony as much as it is your opponent on any given night. The Celtics know this as well as anybody. They have spent years cruising off their bevy of talent so the malaise of a Monday in January was often overcome by some phenomenal shotmaking or a few great defensive stops.
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The top teams are at the top because they can stay there, taking everyone’s best punch and sustaining a beating through whatever physical, skill, or tactical edge they have that night.
But it’s draining to be the hunted. That’s why Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said at the beginning of his sophomore season at the helm that one of his biggest lessons from his surreal rookie season was to break up the year into bite-sized segments. A team’s identity, health, and performance come in waves due to circumstances as they control what they can.
That was part of the beauty of the In-Season Tournament. It blended the finality of the postseason with the randomness of the regular season.
The playoffs don’t care about the ebbs and flows of your season. By the time you get to late April, your marquee win over the Bucks in mid-November is worth just as much as your yucky loss to the Hornets two nights earlier. Your track record only projects how you will show up when the games matter in more absolute terms.
The IST created that urgency to win, but it did it on the nights synonymous with that familiar regular season feeling of whateverness. Boston’s destiny was based on a post-Thanksgiving matinee versus an upstart Magic team most casual fans don’t even realize is good. Then it came down to a Tuesday evening against one of the league’s most disappointing teams. The games that should have the least emphasis in the public eye were elimination games, and that’s the point.
It was the rare time a Tuesday night blowout meant something. And so while the Celtics didn’t get the ultimate prize, they got a small lesson that can pay off long-term.
“Are we frustrated that we didn’t get a chance to win a championship? Yes,” Mazzulla said at practice Monday. “But we have to see that the things that go into winning a championship are the things that go into winning on a Monday night in the middle of January when no one really wants to play.”
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That Monday night in January doctrine has popped up before.
It manifests in familiar ways, from the ball freezing on offense to the point-of-attack defense crumbling. It often will be just a few minutes in an otherwise smooth game, but it happens for long enough to put the Celtics on their back foot. So the IST was an opportunity to realize how those Monday nights — or Tuesday in this case — always matter, even when the payoff doesn’t come right away.
“We’re really fighting for that mindset and identity. Can things be important all the time?” said Mazzulla. “But yeah, I was pissed off that you don’t get a chance to win at it, but we have to fight for that mindset all the time.”
You’re seeing that identity from Sam Hauser, the sharpshooter who is finally shooting sharply. He’s spent his career shooting in the 40 percent range from deep, but this is the first year those shots are consistently difficult. His 0-for-6 drought against the Knicks last game dropped him down to 10th in the league, right in front of Steph Curry.
The big news though is that he’s doing more than just spotting up for 3. Hauser is spacing to the corner the majority of the time, but he has found a way to still make an impact rather than being a bystander.
It starts with how he handles a possession where he never touches the ball. He is so consistent in making the right read to either crash the offensive glass or get back on defense, and he commits all the way when he makes his choice.
Just watch how he suddenly springs into action when Derrick White takes a surprising shot, running from the left corner to the right lane to tip the ball back out to White.
The Knicks had cut the Celtics’ lead in half over the prior few minutes as Boston had missed five straight shots following Jaylen Brown’s ejection, but this play saved the game. But it doesn’t even have to be a big rebound in crunch time. Sometimes it’s just how quickly he sees a teammate getting a shot up and runs to the backcourt to serve as a fast break deterrent. If you watch a possession where a teammate gets up a 3, he’s often already out of the frame by the time the rebound comes down and calling out transition defense assignments.
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Then when he actually is getting involved, he’s finding ways to create when he can’t get the shot off. Boston’s offensive inconsistencies often used to stem from the second unit relying too much on Tatum and Brown to run every possession. But here’s a great example of how Al Horford can be a playmaker through the high post when Hauser wants to initiate a split action.
Hauser is at the point of his development where he no longer has to look for a rescue outlet when the defense closes in on him, instead working the ball to Horford in a playmaking position. His cut creates some switch confusion for the Knicks and gets Payton Pritchard a clean look.
One of the last things he had to add to his repertoire was some way to take advantage of defenders sprinting to close out on him when he catches a pass. He’s too big and moves too well to not have some paint scoring in his game, so it was a big sign of progress to see him try to posterize Isaiah Hartenstein after Quentin Grimes ran him off the line.
He showed a lot of toughness in the Hartenstein matchup, as he sometimes had to cover and rebound against the Knicks center on the defensive end.
Beating a big for a one-handed rebound is great, but the way he read this corner handoff between Hartenstein and Josh Hart was just perfect. The real test though came when Julius Randle kept targeting Hauser in the high post.
Hauser held up well, directing Randle into double teams well without ceding much ground. He just has to learn how to get his hands out of the cookie jar when Randle tries to draw the foul.
As the season has carried on and some of the novelties of the season have level off, Hauser’s well-rounded game continues to come into focus.
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“He’s a much better defender and continues to grow at defense and continues to get better,” Mazzulla said. “And just his ability to be more than a shooter. He can screen, he runs in transition, he’s crashing. So just not being defined by one thing, but finding small areas to affect the game.”
The more experience he gets, the more Hauser looks like a two-way player who can fit into the variety of roles this team requires. So when his coach sees bigs like Randle try to break him down and have minimal success, he doesn’t mind when they win a few possessions. He wants them to keep slowing down their offense to go at him.
“I think it’s great,” Mazzulla said. “I love it.”
(Photo of Sam Hauser: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
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