With the game hanging in the balance late in the fourth quarter and every possession growing in importance, Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum wanted to get his hands on the basketball.
With 3:30 left in the regulation, the four-time All-Star dove on the floor to do so in an effort to secure a defensive rebound. He was immediately swarmed by two Indiana Pacers players as rookie Bennedict Mathurin got his hands on the orange sphere as well to force a jump ball.
But instead of coming up off the floor to get ready for the ensuing tip off, Tatum and Mathurin stayed where they were, fighting over the ball and refusing to let go.
After a handful of seconds, Tatum wrestled the ball away and he explained following Boston’s 142-138 overtime win at Gainbridge Fieldhouse why it was so important for him to never take his hands off the ball.
“Chaos,” Tatum told reporters as seen on NBC Sports Boston postgame coverage. “The refs telling us to let go. Mathurin saying he wasn’t letting go. I for sure wasn’t letting the ball go. Those plays can be big. That gives you momentum. The team sees whether it’s the best player, the youngest player, the oldest player dive on the floor, fighting for the ball. You come up with that ball, the team feeds off that energy.
“And you could see everybody was excited and hyped. I think that kind of was one of the big moments of the game. That was very important to me. I was not letting go of that basketball.”
That play was just one of a few contentious moments between the Celtics and Pacers. In the third quarter, Marcus Smart and Tyrese Haliburton got into a heated exchange after the two had a physical encounter on a Smart post-up. Smart then scored on a drive against Haliburton and gestured at him, which earned the Celtics veteran a technical foul.
The Celtics stood tall against the feisty Pacers, though. Tatum’s effort came after he re-aggravated his left wrist injury when he took a nasty fall in the first quarter.
And it showed the superstar is willing to do the dirty work even in a game that didn’t hold a ton of significance.
