Youthful Celts able to play it cool in the end

Shane Larkin is 25, and even by NBA standards not considered old.

But against the backdrop of where he now plays, the point guard is downright grizzled.

“I think I’m the fourtholdest guy on this team,” Larkin said after the Celtics literally stole one in Indianapolis Monday night when one of those young guys, Terry Rozier, picked off a Bojan Bogdanovic pass with four seconds left and dunked it for a 112-111 win.

“Definitely a lot of young guys, and we fight, fight to the end and keep believing,” he said. “We know we have a great coach who will give us a chance at the end with great plays. That’s all it is — heart and faith in each other.”

Heart and faith seem to count for a lot right now. The Celtics unravel, commit bad fouls down the stretch, occasionally go off on ill-advised bouts of hero ball when the other team is on a run, and somehow do enough to override those mistakes at the end.

Al Horford sounded like he was trying to overcome a headache when describing this frenzied pattern.

“Well, we recovered, but it wasn’t one of our best moments,” said Horford, at 30 the oldest Celtics player. “I felt like we dominated the game and let them back in. Lance Stephenson getting offensive rebounds, (Victor) Oladipo was scoring over us, we didn’t close it out like we were supposed to. But we still found a way, and guys came up and made plays.”

The most tangible result of nights like that seems to be a growing sense of self- belief in a roster that has Horford and Kyrie Irving to calm the general mood, especially at times when Marcus Smart might try a behind-the-back pass at the wrong point in a game or Jaylen Brown begins taking fouls at a rapid rate.

“We don’t necessarily want to be in those posi- tions, but it gives our group a sense of we’ve been here before, stay poised and just keep playing the game,” Horford said. “We want to avoid this type of situation and put the game away early, but it helps us grow as a group. A big win.

“It’s great — gives our whole group a lot of confidence, puts us in a different position. A lot of times when this happens — 99 percent of the time — you’re losing the game. They’re hitting free throws, you’re shooting, but our guys kept fighting and played until there was no time.

“We just tried to keep extending the game. Kyrie hitting big shots, Marcus hit a huge shot down the lane as well. Putting ourselves in that position, we just played the game out. We were fortunate. I felt like we had the game, kind of gave it back to them, and found a way to take it again.”

It obviously helps to have one of the NBA’s great shotmakers, though Irving is getting help from a number of sources. Smart came through with his usual assortment of clutch defensive plays and a big floater down the stretch Monday. Jayson Tatum, now at 51.5 percent, is the most efficient 3-point shooter in the league.

Tatum’s cool head with the ball, in particular, points to how rapidly this team is maturing.

“Just unwavering belief and it echoing down from our coaching staff to all of us,” Irving said of the source of the late-game confidence. “We’ve been in some tough games this year, but being in a situation like that is not ideal. But when you are, we feel pretty confident about guys we can go to, and we also have one of the best coaches at ATOs (after timeouts) and drawing up plays with misdirection that can get you a great look. You feel pretty confident as well, so we don’t want to be in that position, but we were.”

That considered, with 9.3 seconds left — the count when Indiana inbounded the ball — the odds were leaning heavily the other way.

“Sometimes things work out in your favor. Sometimes it’s just a random game where things work out in your favor,” coach Brad Stevens said. “I know as much as we all try to analyze it, I think we got lucky in a lot of ways. But we stayed in the play and played really hard and gave ourselves a chance.”