Ime Udoka went against the grain in the final minute of the Celtics-Nets series opener Sunday afternoon at TD Garden.
Trailing Brooklyn by one with roughly 30 seconds left in the fourth quarter, Boston put together a great defensive stand that concluded with Al Horford pulling down a rebound from a missed Kevin Durant shot. Udoka didn’t hesitate with his plan of attack for the C’s, motioning for his team to stay composed rather than calling a timeout, drawing up a play and hoping for the best.
Boston, as instructed, calmly advanced the ball past half-court. Jaylen Brown looked for a drive to the basket before kicking it out to Marcus Smart, who surprisingly passed up on a 3-point attempt and dished it to Jayson Tatum. The three-time All-Star did the rest, spinning around Kyrie Irving and laying up the game-winner.
It was a highly impressive sequence by the Celtics, made possible by a gutsy decision from a first-year head coach. All things considered, Boston’s collective morale had to be pretty damn high Sunday night.
“You’ve got to give credit to Ime for trusting us in that situation with one timeout to just go,” Smart told reporters, per Celtics.com. “That’s a big confidence builder for us. The coach trusted us to go out there and make a play and be basketball players.”
The C’s in recent years have caught deserved flak for poor execution in late-game situations. The Game 1 finish doesn’t mean that tendency is completely behind the Celtics, but at a minimum, it showed marked growth by a team with legitimate Finals aspirations.
Should Wednesday’s Game 2 also go down to the wire, the idea of crumbling likely won’t even cross the minds of Smart, Tatum and company.
