Celts steal one in Indy
Rozier finishes it with dunk
INDIANAPOLIS — Al Horford was feeling so good — relieved, too — that he ordered a postgame ride last night.
As the Celtics broke from their mosh-pit celebration, Horford jumped on the back of Aron Baynes and demanded a lift to the locker room.
“I was the one always getting jumped by one of the guards,” Horford said. “I just saw Baynes there and I said, ‘Hey, take me to the locker room.’ Very emotional, almost surreal. We’re just having fun out there.”
The C’s also had raw fingernails, from a 112-111 win against the Indiana Pacers that, to hear everyone tell it, had gone wildly wrong before Terry Rozier stole a Bojan Bogdanovic pass at midcourt with roughly four seconds left and took the ball in for a game-winning dunk.
Rozier, thinking back to his football days in Cleveland, said he channeled his inner defensive back to make the play — or maybe it was his inner Duron Harmon. On Sunday, Rozier did indeed watch the Patriots safety seal a win in Pittsburgh with an interception.
And as with the Patriots the previous day, the Celtics last night committed almost too many sins to be forgiven by a game-breaking steal.
The Celtics hit their first 10 shots and ran up an early 19-point lead, a situation, according to coach Brad Stevens, that’s not as enjoyable as one would think.
“It’s probably the most uncomfortable position a coach can be in is way up and you know that you’re not going to make every shot,” Stevens said. “You don’t want to get to thinking the game is going to be free and easy.”
The win certainly didn’t come easy.
The Pacers’ Victor Oladipo scored 30 of his 38 points in the second half, including 14 in the fourth quarter. In the process of scoring the last nine points in a 15-2 run that gave the Pacers a fivepoint lead with 31.3 seconds left, he seemingly broke the game open.
That’s when Kyrie Irving, on the way to 30 points, buried the first of two 3-pointers in a 16-second span. The first trey cut the Indiana lead to 107-105, and after Marcus Smart again cut the deficit to two at 109-107 with a floater with :22 on the clock, Irving answered two Oladipo free throws with his second bomb that left the Pacers up only 111-110 with 9.3 seconds left.
Indiana coach Nate McMillan called for a timeout, set up an inbounds play at midcourt, then watched it all unravel.
Stevens wanted his group — Irving, Horford, Smart, Rozier and Shane Larkin — to trap and foul quickly, though nothing was called when Cory Joseph caught the inbounds pass and unloaded the ball to Bogdanovic while being hammered by both Smart and Irving. Bogdanovic, a strong free throw shooter, also unloaded the ball quickly, a cross-court pass intended for Oladipo, as Larkin attempted to close out with a foul.
“I wanted to pressure him for a second and then force something. Lucky for us, he didn’t want any part of the ball and just lofted it up there,” Larkin said. “I jumped pretty high and he threw it over my hands, so I knew it was going to be up there for at least a second. Whenever you throw a hang-time pass on the court with that many athletes, it’s liable to get picked off. Terry is great, athletic, super fast, so I got high enough to give him enough time to get there, and he made the play.”
Following Rozier’s dunk, Oladipo’s last-second heave actually hit the rim. Then Stevens could finally breathe.
“It’s too little time to do more than one trap, but we were fortunate to steal the pass, because if we don’t, they’re shooting free throws with four seconds left and it’s a much harder shot coming and you’re probably down three,” Stevens said. “But our guys stayed in the play and we have a lot of quick guys on the floor and we’re usually a hard team to inbound and reverse against. But we got fortunate. Terry made a great play.”
Indeed, Rozier saved what could have been an ugly loss.
“As soon as I stole the ball, I took dribbles, but you glance up there and I (saw) I was like four seconds or something like that, so I was like, ‘I know I definitely have enough time,’ because you have thoughts of shooting it, too, because you don’t know how much time is left,” Rozier said. “But I had enough time to dunk the ball.”