BOSTON — Before Wednesday’s elimination game against the Knicks, Jayson Tatum sent his Celtics teammates and coaches a text urging them to keep fighting.
His message?
“Keep trying to accomplish the goal,” recalled Luke Kornet.
So, with their season on the brink of collapse, they put together one of their best postseason performances en route to a 127-102 win, forcing a Game 6 in a series they once trailed 3-1.
“You just rely on the character of the guys, the togetherness, the staff,” Mazzulla said. “At the end of the day, you don’t get to pick the test that you have. You just pick how you respond to them, and that’s kind of how life works.”
At a national level, the Celtics’ obituary began to be written even before it was officially announced that Tatum — the team’s leading scorer, playmaker, and rebounder this season — had ruptured his Achilles tendon. The Ringer’s Michael Pena penned a story titled: “This Is the End of the Celtics as We Know Them.”
But 61-win defending champions don’t just collapse because one player gets hurt, even if that player is one of the best in the world.
The team’s two longest-tenured players — Al Horford and Jaylen Brown — made sure of it. The duo gathered the group for a conversation with a unified message: the Celtics, just like Tatum communicated, had to keep fighting.
And, it all had to begin on the defensive end.
“Defense. That’s all I’m talking about — defense,” Brown said. “Just, nothing easy. Guard your yard, find a way to get stops, dig deep, mano a mano, win your matchups, play defense. That’s pretty much been the emphasis.”
No one tried to minimize the emotions of Tatum’s injury, or deny that it would be difficult to replace the six-time All-Star.
“At the same time, we do have an opportunity to move forward,” Kornet said of Brown and Horford’s message. “You just gotta take it one day at a time.”
Derrick White helped spearhead the victory with a 34-point onslaught
The scoring was going to have to come from somewhere.
Enter Derrick White.
White, one of Tatum’s closest friends on the roster, appeared almost helpless when asked after the win how he was navigating the emotions of Tatum’s injury.
The two friends are temporarily in different Northeastern cities: Tatum is in New York City, bedridden and focused on his recovery, while White is in Boston and fighting with the Celtics to stave off elimination.
“All I can do, really, is…
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