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Jamal Collier, ESPN
Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla admitted Monday that he had to call a timeout before the final possession of his team’s 116-115 overtime loss to the Philadelphia 76ers in Game 4, walking back his original comments about the decision after in the game on Sunday.
The Celtics inbounded the ball with 19 seconds left after James Harden’s 3-pointer, but never got a shot off before the final buzzer.
Mazzulla defended the strategy after Sunday’s game, but on Monday he acknowledged that a timeout would have given the Celtics more chances to win the game.
“At the end of overtime, hindsight is 20/20. I should have been called [a timeout] to help us get a 2-for-1 or a couple more possessions,” Mazzulla said during a conference call with reporters. “So, obviously with 14 seconds left, down one, you want to get more chances as much as you can. So we can definitely learn from that. “
The Celtics faced the same scenario at the end of the fourth quarter. Harden tied the game with a floater with 16.1 seconds left in regulation, and the Celtics inbounded the ball without calling a timeout. Jayson Tatum’s drive set up an open 3-pointer from Marcus Smart, who missed as the game went into overtime.
However, Mazzulla stood by his decision at the end of the fourth quarter.
“It’s something we’ve been talking about all year,” he said Monday. “We’re relying on our guys to make the right play. [Not calling a timeout] prevents the other team from taking matchups off the floor. This prevents the other team from organizing their defense.
“Hindsight is always 20/20, so it sounds good to say, ‘Yeah we have to do this,’ but we’ve been preparing all year as a team to be able to take advantage of those situations. More times than not It didn’t work for us. I thought regulation was over. We got the last shot, which is what you want. You don’t want them to get another chance.”
Down one toward the end of overtime, Tatum dribbled out the clock and didn’t begin driving to the basket until there were about five seconds left on the game clock. He supported his coach’s decision not to call a timeout at the end of the game but admitted that he should have started attacking the basket immediately.
Tatum recalled how he hit the game-winning layup in the final seconds of Game 1 of Boston’s 2022 first-round series against the Brooklyn Nets because the Celtics inbounded the ball without calling a timeout, which prevents the opposing defense from being organized.
“We’ve been doing it all year, we feel confident in that,” Celtics center Al Horford said after Game 4. “The momentum is there. [Marcus] Smart should have caught it half a second earlier, already falling. I’m not too worried about that game.”
Mazzulla, a 34-year-old in his first season as head coach, gave his players freedom on the final possessions of the entire season without stopping the game with a timeout. And while he stuck to the principles behind the decision-making, he acknowledged there were lessons he could learn from Boston’s last possession in overtime.
“I think the two lessons you learn from that is the call [a timeout] then, get 2-for-1, get two shots, get a couple more possessions,” Mazzulla said. “Or we have to have a clear understanding as a team that we have to go faster to get a shot. We’ve done both over the course of the season. We just didn’t implement one in that particular situation.
The series is tied 2-2. Game 5 is Tuesday night in Boston.
