Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The Boston Celtics, riding one of the most dominant 11-game stretches in NBA history, absolutely running away with the Eastern Conference and the best record in the league, took a 22-point lead on a Jayson Tatum putback with nine minutes left against the No. 3 seed Cleveland Cavaliers with nine minutes left. This was Tatum’s face after that bucket.

That smile would not last.

Dean “DWade” Wade went bonkers down the stretch, leading a relatively quick Cleveland comeback that left space for a deeply tense and stressful final two minutes, rife with review and controversy.

The jumpball was adjudicated correctly, it seems — the game clock starts when the ball is tipped — and the overturned call against Darius Garland seems correct on review. Some folks have mentioned that if the officials simply didn’t call the foul, Kristaps Porzingis had a clear putback to win the game, but it’s pretty clear based on my half-arsed analysis that because of the double bounce on the rim, time would have expired before Porzingis made the tip. As such, this appears to be the correct result.

(I’m pretty flummoxed about Porzingis not getting free throws on the earlier possession where Georges Niang was almost literally inside his jersey on a post-up. Joe Dumars says you can do that now?)

Here’s my take on games like this between teams like this.

FOR CLEVELAND

Cleveland was missing Donovan Mitchell and Max Strus, and lost Evan Mobley in the third quarter. They have recently lost games they should have won, but in no circumstances is this a game the Cavaliers should have won. You go down by 22 in the fourth, and my guess is that if DWade didn’t immediately go nuclear, J.B. Bickerstaff would have turned to garbage time units at the next stoppage. At that point, you just want to get out of there and hope for the best from Mobley’s injury.

Then absolute magic happens … despite your best healthy player (Garland) making a ton of mistakes and near-mistakes. Seriously: Jrue Holiday and Derrick White had Garland in hell down the stretch here, while Cleveland was triggering an avalanche on the Celtics. The Cavaliers’ big buckets are largely off of broken plays or second chances. (You have to box out a flying DWade! We’ve known this for two decades!)

The crowd (joined by notable Ohioan Travis Kelce) had a wonderful time. The Cavs bench (joined by a stylish Mitchell) had a wonderful time. The players on the court had a wonderful time. The Cavaliers have these improbable wins against good (in this case great) opponents sprinkled throughout their season. It’s building an internal narrative of belief, of challenges overcome, of grit and resilience. That’s a huge positive on the mindset of a team that will almost assuredly be underdogs after the first round, and depending on the match-up could be a popular pick to be upset in the first round. “Nobody believed in us” is a deeply overused motivational cliché in team sports. But damned if it doesn’t seem to work. And for Cleveland, it’s legitimate.

This win is pure rocket fuel for that mindset. Only good things can come from that comeback.

FOR BOSTON

I daresay that I’m going to agree with yet another deeply overused motivational cliché: the lessons the Celtics could take from this heartbreaking loss outweigh whatever positives would come from a 12th-straight win.

Just look at the final possession. That was a nightmare, and it’s not the first time Celtics fans have had it. After Wade’s putback, Boston has the ball down one with 19 seconds left. Two timeouts. The C’s don’t take one, and Tatum walks the ball up slowly. Jarrett Allen picks him up just past midcourt. (Get you a center who you put on an MVP candidate wing on a final possession! Hell yeah, JA.) Tatum calls for a White screen to get a switch onto Garland. The switch is made with about eight seconds left. We’re moving in molasses here! You’re down a point! The clock is your enemy! Brown, for some reason, is 35 feet from the basket, allowing Wade to cheat a little to funnel Tatum left, where Allen can help off White a little to force Tatum back to the right as Caris LeVert is in position to rotate to White off Holiday in the corner.

Tatum doesn’t seem to consider for one second passing the ball. Pure iso, with a fadeaway midrange jumper over a much smaller defender (with late help coming from Allen).

Tatum makes it and he gets mobbed by his teammates, he rips the heart out of the Cleveland crowd, he gets an “Is Tatum MVP?” segment on First Take and a ton of hype heading into Thursday’s match-up with Jokic and the Nuggets, the lore builds. He misses it and he gets some (largely misguided) murmurs about his clutch abilities. He’ll take that. He’s a Kobe acolyte. Kobe takes that shot. It’s what stars of this mindset do.

The question is whether the Celtics have to be in position for Tatum to make that call, which is definitely not the correct one. And certainly, the Celtics never needed to be in position to have a single shot decide the outcome following Wade’s putback. They had 19 seconds and two timeouts. The Cavaliers had been bumbling the ball a good bit and were missing three of their top five players. The Celtics had the best five-man line-up in the league on the court.

I legitimately think that Joe Mazzulla, Tatum and the team will discuss and work on these endgame scenarios and have a different tact the next time. The White-Porzingis two-man game is basically unstoppable, especially with Allen taking on the Tatum assignment in this case. You can put Georges Niang and Darius Garland in a pick-and-roll for the game? Seems fruitful. In any case, you can get a shot up earlier in the clock to give yourself a chance to either take the lead, get a second chance opportunity, or foul quickly and get a chance at the win or tie on a subsequent possession. You’re in the first game of a road trip that doesn’t feature any back-to-backs for a week. Stretch the game out a little!

Is Mazzulla confident enough at this point to really turn this into a moment for reflection and improvement? He should be: Mazzulla and his staff have done a great job this season. Tatum seems reasonable enough. This moment could lead the Celtics to abandon hero ball in key moments and play more tactically than instinctually.

Or it could be that everyone in the building is comfortable winning or losing on Tatum isolation fall-aways. We’ll see how that goes against teams better than an injury-riddled Cavaliers squad.

It seems like a bad recipe, but the impetus to solve it with a perfect example of its flaws is on the table, thanks to this loss. The defeat can help, if the Celtics let it.

In any case, Boston remains by far the best team of this regular season and any of the past five, and should be considered a strong favorite to win the East and the title. This weird little loss doesn’t change that at all. It certainly provides fuel to those with doubts about late-game execution while, again, also providing a path to fixing those.

Politics on Super Tuesday

After the Pelicans’ lopsided win in Toronto, Zion Williamson was feeling good and sang a song heard loud and clear at the league office and Turner Sports HQ.

Zion says that if he’s able to “do his part” by making the All-Star team, he’ll compete in the Dunk Contest. Jamal Crawford called this “politicking” on TNT after the comments. The funny thing to me is that Zion has been named an All-Star twice in the four seasons he’s played in the NBA. That he’ll make it again is not remotely a stretch. So hopefully we can legitimately look forward to that.

My question is whether Zion, who has lost some explosiveness but continues to refine his floor game, will be a compelling Dunk Contest performer. We’ve seen some jawdroppers from him over the years … but not really lately. He’s more of a power dunker like Jaylen Brown, who, bless him, was not compelling this year.

Scores

Magic 101, Hornets 89 — Me, last week, when Orlando was 7th in the East:

I’m calling it: Orlando is going to slip into the No. 4 seed for a spell.

And would you look at that?

Holding Charlotte under 90 isn’t some great achievement, but the Magic defense is truly impressive. One creative, explosive guard is all they need to be a real factor here!

Pelicans 139, Raptors 89 — Teams with a top-10 offense and defense right now in the NBA: the Boston Celtics, the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Denver Nuggets and … the New Orleans Pelicans (No. 8 offense, No. 6 defense).

Ten threes for Trey Murphy III. Most of them created out of Point Zion action, which the Raptors had no earthly chance of stopping.

16-8-9 for Zion, by the way.

Hawks 116, Knicks 100 — Josh Hart has played 40+ minutes in seven straight games. Through the first 12 games of the Knicks season, Deuce McBride played a total of 40 minutes. He’s played 45 minutes in each of the past two games, and 40+ in three of the last four. Someone get Tom Thibodeau some more healthy players!

Is Jalen Johnson the top contender for Most Improved Player?

Pistons 110, Heat 118 — Duncan Robinson likes it spicy, look at how much hot sauce he carries in his bag.

D-Rob’s quote about it after the game was hilarious, too.

Sixers 107, Nets 112

Celtics 104, Cavaliers 105

Spurs 101, Rockets 114 — The rising star European center is this one was … Alperen Sengun! 45 points, 16 rebounds, 3 assists, 5 steals, a block and the win. Incredible performance. And he’s having a lot of fun.

(The Sengun-Jalen Green thing is … working lately? It seems?)

Pacers 137, Mavericks 120 — When I was watching the Mavericks hang close to the Celtics on Friday, I started to formulate in my head a case for a healthy Dallas to be a real threat in the West. Then Boston hit the gas and blew the Mavs out late. Then the Mavs lost to the Embiid-less Sixers at home on national T.V. on Sunday. And now this?

Luka Doncic became the third player ever with at least four consecutive 30-point triple-doubles. The Mavericks have lost three of those games. The team had no major players absent in any of them. The defense has been atrocious, and for some reason Jason Kidd has moved away from lineups that worked while the team was suffering from rampant injuries. (Whither the Lively-Exum-Jones unit?)

Anyways,

This story about the Mavericks having a film session and talking about needing to clean up their defense was published before this game. Welp.

Good win for the Pacers. Nice to see Tyrese Haliburton break out of his slump.

Suns 117, Nuggets 107 — Helluva win for the Suns without Devin Booker. Grayson Allen went 6/6 from three in the first half. Something looked a little off with about half of the Nuggets’ possessions in the first half, too — nothing that the Suns in particular seemed to be doing other than Jusuf Nurkic being physical with Nikola Jokic, just a little out of sync. In any case, this is not dissimilar from the Celtics-Cavs game in that the Nuggets will not lose a millisecond of sleep over losing to the Suns at home while the Suns will get a nice confidence boost out of the win.

Kevin Durant is always a pleasure to watch.

Schedule

More basketball. All times Eastern.

Magic at Wizards, 7
Cavaliers at Hawks, 7:30
Grizzlies at Sixers, 7:30
Clippers at Rockets, 7:30, ESPN
Bulls at Jazz, 9
Bucks at Warriors, 10, ESPN
Thunder at Blazers, 10
Kings at Lakers, 10:30 — A Lakers win here pulls L.A. within a half-game of No. 7

Links

Howard Beck on Draymond Green’s quest for peace. Must-read.

Jared Dubin on whether the Thunder’s well-established rebounding problems are a fatal flaw.

The Celtics did get one victory on Tuesday: this immaculate video edit coming out of their Warriors beatdown. Pure beauty.

Rick Pitino is definitely one of the most bizarrely interesting-in-a-lamentable-sort-of-way personalities in basketball over the past three or four decades. PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT digs in on all the weirdness.

Henry Abbott in TrueHoop on a new study touting the power of foul-drawing.

Krysten Peek on what’s most likely to be next for Bronny James after some reporting from Woj over the weekend on the family’s plans. Mirin Fader gives Bronny the Mirin Fader profile treatment to great effect. For me personally, my interest in Bronny has largely been about what it means for LeBron’s potential career decisions going forward. But it appears that LeBron will be back with the Lakers next season regardless.

Glad to see Andrew Wiggins is back.

Kate Wagner wrote one of the best sports-ish stories I’ve read in months (if not longer) on conspicuous wealth, morality, sportswashing, journalism and F1 racing for Road & Track. Road & Track unpublished the story within hours of it going live last week, but through the Wayback Machine all things are possible. Incredible piece. Thanks to Helen Rosner for uplifting it. A quote:

I think if you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. No need for corny art singing tribute to the worker or even for the Manifesto. Never before had I seen so many wealthy people gathered all in one place. If a tornado came through and wiped the whole thing out, the stock market would plummet and the net worth of a country the size of Slovenia would vanish from the ledgers in a day. I used to live in Baltimore and remembered the kind of people who would go to the Preakness in their stupid hats and Sunday best while the whole swath of the city it was situated in starved and languished for lack of funds. This was like that, but without the hats. I saw $30,000 Birkin bags and $10,000 Off-White Nikes. I saw people with the kind of Rolexes that make strangers cry on Antiques Roadshow. I saw Ozempic-riddled influencers and fleshy, T-shirt-clad tech bros and people who still talked with Great Gatsby accents as they sweated profusely in Yves Saint Laurent under the unforgiving Texas sun. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever. People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body. I stood there among them in a thrift-store blouse and shorts from Target.

That’s all for today. Be excellent to each other.