A broomstick and a dream: 4 takeaways from Celtics/Pacers (2024)

Six days ago, I had a dream.

I have lots of them. Some are about missing a class for an entire semester, others about forgetting to turn off the stove before I left for a week-long vacation. Sometimes, I talk to people I haven’t thought about in years in my dreams and catch up on things that didn’t really happen. Other times I’m just eating a can of Pringles.

But every once in a while, one of my dreams persists after I wake up. It shoots a hole through the barrier between my unconscious and conscious mind, demanding that I reckon with what it showed me while also living my awake life. One time, it was a spec script for a horror movie that I just had to write down, and another time I dreamt that I had forgotten my water bottle in Spanish class, and I actually had.

Six days ago, another dream descended from the spiritual plane into the actual world. It was a dream that the Boston Celtics would sweep the Indiana Pacers. I wrote it down, made sure all the commas were in the right places and sent it out to the world for peer review. “The Celtics are going to sweep the Pacers” began as a foolish recounting of a foolish hope, more likely than not to end up a dream deferred.

But tell Langston Hughes to shut up. Because that dream was real.

(intermission)

Alright, welcome back everyone to another episode of Oliver Writes the Takeaways. The above was the 250-word allotted gloating session for correctly predicting a sweep on this very website six glorious days ago. Per the official CelticsBlog prediction handbook, that’s all I’m allowed to brag...for now.

But the Celtics are going to the NBA Finals, so we have bigger fish to fry. Specifically, it’s time to chef up a Pacers Shrimp-Calamari Stir Fry and serve it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We will have ample time to discuss the matchup with the Dallas Maver… sorry, whoever comes out of the Western Conference Finals in the next week, so let’s give the Pacers the credit and jeering that they’re due.

(You don’t even want to know how long I tried to come up with a Tyrese Haliburton pun that used the “Halibut” fish in that last paragraph. I’m actually devastated that I couldn’t figure one out)

And let’s also give some credit to the Celtics, who finished off the Eastern Conference in Game 4, capping off four straight wins to head to the fourth round of the NBA playoffs and are exactly four games away from becoming one of the greatest single-season teams of all time. To make sure the feng shui of the moment stays uniform, here are four takeaways from Celtics-Pacers.

1. If not now, then when?

This is the only question left.

They are now 76-20 entering the NBA finals, only the ninth team ever to make it to the Finals with 20 or fewer losses. They dropped two total games in the Eastern Conference, and they did the vast majority of it without their super weapon Kristaps Porzinigs.

On paper, the Celtics weren’t just better than the teams they played: they were basically playing a different sport. Every single advanced and kindergarten-level stat known to man told you the Celtics were the best team in the league and the best team in the Eastern Conference by six or seven orders of magnitude. Going 12-2 so far was probably a middling result if you ask data models.

However, NBA discourse is in the midst of an analytics Thermidor—the reactionary period of the French Revolution where everyone decided to chill the hell out for a few months—with the loudest and most influential voices once again relying more on history, eye-test and feel to drive their takes rather than numerical explanations.

Throughout the playoffs, the Celtics have been discussed and covered like a really talented five-seed whose draw broke favorably, rather than the analytically dominant and historically notable juggernaut they’ve been for seven months. And as much as I’d like to pull out receipts and tell every podcaster and pundit how wrong they were, it’s not really anyone’s fault.

2. Indiana Pacers: generational choke artists?

The last time I wrote the takeaways, we all had a discussion about what it means to steal a game. There were some questions about home versus road results and how much that really mattered, but we all agreed on one definition:

“Steal a game”

Verb+indefinite article+noun

To win a game in which your opponent is in total or at least partial control until the very end, when through a combination of clutch plays and opposing implosion, you win.

By my calculations, the Celtics stole Games 1, 3 and 4 in a series that will be known to history as a dominant sweep. If the NBA was a game show, this series was like the Celtics going on a legendary Jeopardy run by risking it all on Final Jeopardy three times in a row.

Let’s be clear about one thing: the Celtics made more than a few clutch plays down the stretch in Game 4. From Brown’s ultra-clutch corner three in Game 1 to Jrue Holiday’s certifiably-epic steal in Game 3, they stole the games because they were expert thieves.

Mike Breen has lost his chase-down-block-call fastball since he brought the house down with “BLOCKED BY JAMES” in 2016, but I’ll take what I can get here.

This is one of those blocks that I call an “absolutely not” block, where a guy just summons the strength of Hercules and refuses to allow the shot to reach the rim. Jaylen put his back into that defensive recovery and told Andrew Nembhard to start making dinner reservations for Thursday night. Plays like this dotted the end of the game, with the Celtics continually executing in the face of tremendous danger. They got every rebound, found every opening, and won every 50-50 ball.

But as good as the Celtics were, the Pacers also choked harder and more consistently than any team I’ve ever seen. There are lots of choke-jobs in NBA history, but the Pacers took it to another planet entirely by doing it thrice in six days. It was like a charcuterie board of ways to choke a game: late-game turnovers, poor defensive execution and communication, and just straight-up missing everything.

3. Emotional Intelligence

As the stakes of each game rise, so do the tempers of everyone involved in them. That’s just human nature, but Game 4 saw a few of my least favorite emotional outbursts from both Celtics and Pacers alike.

First we have Myles Turner, committing one of the very few “yeah, that was definitely a technical foul” moments of the playoffs so far. Normally, techs are assessed for highly questionable attitudinal issues, such as Jayson Tatum lightly waving his hand at Tony Brothers or for Kristaps Porzingis hanging on the rim for an extra 0.76 seconds so he doesn’t break his leg on the stanchion. But this one wasn’t really that hard to assess.

Of course, Brown also got a technical for starting it, which…like, sure. Whatever.

You’re probably wondering why I even care about this moment since the Celtics advanced to the Finals and the Pacers, you know, didn’t. It’s pretty much no harm, no foul at the end of the day. Except there was harm, and it was a foul, but you get what I mean.

Brown himself said he wasn’t angry at Turner after the game, acknowledging—somewhat condescendingly—that “Myles is a good kid” and he just wanted to make sure he knew that there were people watching him that were relying on him keeping his composure. Turner is also seven months older than Brown, so… there’s that.

“Regardless of the result this year, internally, I’ve been able to focus more on myself in terms of keeping my composure, managing my game anxiety,” Brown said after the game of his own temper on the court. “Regardless of the result, this year has been my best year in that regard.”

I care about this moment as it illustrates the fascinating ways NBA players deal with the intense emotions and stress of the moment. Turner essentially threw caution to the wind for two seconds to make sure he shoved Brown as hard as he could without actually injuring him. He needed to get some steam off his chest, but also had to hold back so he didn’t get ejected.

I truly believe the NBA is full of this calculated violence. Draymond Green is the master of this behavior, perfecting the “I’m basically going to commit felony assault on you, but all you get is one free throw” move to instill fear in his opponents. This year saw NBA referees lose their patience with some of his antics, but he’ll keep trying it as long as he’s around.

Turner lost his cool, plain and simple, and he lashed out physically. But Jayson Tatum also lost his temper at a different point and started doing the second emotionally unintelligent routine of the night.

This was the trigger for Tatum’s dejected-angst mode. It won’t show up on the rest of the highlights, but if you get a chance, watch the full game replay from that point and look at how Tatum is physically moving around the court. He doesn’t want the ball at all, and treats it like a hot potato for the next four minutes—even committing a terrible turnover and forcing Head Coach Joe Mazzulla to yank him from the game for a short rest.

It’s like Tatum needed to meditate or something, and I’ve seen him do this throughout his career especially this season. It was something I first tagged when I saw the Celtics play the Timberwolves in person last year. If Tatum doesn’t like a call, he might just go into dejected-angst mode and basically be a glorified rebounding power forward for five minutes.

I would pay anything to know if the Celtics staff has worked with him on this and if they’ve developed strategies to minimize the effect frustration has on his game. In the Finals, Tatum is going to have the ball a lot, and the Maveri… (sigh) I mean, whoever wins that series—will surely try to activate his frustrations.

I’m curious to see how he handles those moments because the Celtics can’t afford a passive Tatum. When he has the ball, good things happen.

A broomstick and a dream: 4 takeaways from Celtics/Pacers (3)

4. Everyone go celebrate a little bit

A lot of people don’t need reasons to celebrate. I have friends who will go out and party like it’s New Year’s Eve just for finishing a computer science problem set. I, for one, can pop a literary bottle of champagne over every Celtics, Patriots, or Bruins win. The Red Sox and I are fighting right now.

But other people struggle allowing themselves to celebrate. It can be hard to get yourself in the mood for a party when the job isn’t finished yet, and I’m not saying we should all go out and throw the rager of the century for making it out of the East again.

But what I will say is that everyone should go out and treat yourselves today, whatever that means. Maybe order Pizza for dinner? Get some Ice Cream with the family after work and get some sort of green flavor or topping. Maybe just put an extra shot of espresso in your morning coffee or simply go for an extra walk around the block when you feel like you could do the dishes. They’ll be there in 10 minutes, I promise.

None of us are on the team, but membership in the Celtics community requires a tremendous amount of belief, commitment, and unflinching resolve in the face of intensely stressful situations. Making it out of the East was the last procedural matter to attend to, and now we get to march into the exciting stuff. Before we do that, though, everyone just take the day off from worrying.

Enjoy the Dallas Mavericks-Minnesota Timberwolves game without worrying about who we’ll see in the finals. Just pour yourself your favorite alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage—I, for one, will probably be going with this awesome German soda called Spezi—and raise a toast to a great playoff run so far. There’ll be time to steel our hearts tomorrow.

(Takeaways are over. Please do not read further. There is nothing left in the article)

Secret Bonus Takeaway #5: Ben Sheppard disasterclass

Okay, I didn’t want to include this in the main text of the Takeaways because part of me felt like this was supposed to be kinda-sorta sacred and touchy-feely. But I just had to put this at the end because nothing was funnier than Ben Sheppard last night.

He started the game, which might just be the most aspirational lineup decision I’ve ever seen. It’s like Rick Carlisle was trying to manifest Sheppard being a useful offensive player instead of just starting T.J. McConnell—who had been terrorizing the Celtics for 12 quarters—because the latter literally can’t shoot.

You see coaches do this all the time with injured stars. Instead of just starting their best players, they try to keep their holy rotations intact by subbing in their best imitator of their star. When Tatum would miss a game, Mazzulla would just throw in Sam Hauser and keep Al Horford coming off the bench.

But if Sheppard is supposed to be a Haliburton impersonator, then just call me Frank Sinatra. He was just… horrendous in Game 3, scoring 0 points in 26 minutes, which is basically harder to do than randomly getting fouled once. Game 4 wasn’t much better, with a crisp 3 points on 21 minutes and committing three fouls.

Occasionally in a playoff series, there are players that just can’t hang. Why Carlisle even kept him in the rotation is beyond me, let alone starting him! Coaches just can’t get out of their own way sometimes.