Ironically, the toughest three-point attempt of them all — a banked-in heave at the third-quarter buzzer by Payton Pritchard, the reserve guard’s only make of the night — loosened the mood on a tense evening and set up Boston to bring home the victory in the final period.
“The play of the game was Payton’s shot at the end of the quarter,” Coach Joe Mazzulla said. “You see guys around the league pass up on that shot or fake like they want to take it so their [shooting] numbers don’t get messed up. He takes pride in taking that. That’s winning basketball.”
Celtics guard Derrick White staved off a late Mavericks comeback bid by blocking P.J. Washington at the rim in the final minute, and Jaylen Brown attacked the hoop for a dagger bucker with 29.8 seconds remaining. Boston improved to 5-0 in this postseason in games that were within five points in the final five minutes.
“I got dunked on earlier [in the game],” White said. “Being not afraid to get dunked on lets me get [a block] that other people might not get. I believed in my abilities.”
Boston’s breezy Game 1 victory became a distant memory as soon as Game 2 tipped off. The Celtics missed their first eight three-point attempts, coming up empty from outside until Al Horford finally connected from the left corner right before the end of the first quarter. Their slow start was made worse by Jayson Tatum’s indecision: The five-time all-star spent most of the early going in his own head, declining open scoring opportunities in favor of shuffling the ball to his teammates.
But the Celtics managed to take a 64-61 lead into halftime because the Mavericks were unable to conjure enough help for Luka Doncic. The Slovenian star posted a game-high 32 points to go with 11 rebounds and 11 assists, but his teammates combined to shoot 2 for 17 from deep. Mavericks guard Kyrie Irving left a lot to be desired for the second straight game, finishing with 16 points on 7-for-18 shooting while facing constant boos from the TD Garden crowd.
After being listed as questionable on the pregame injury report with a chest contusion, Doncic was late to take the court for warmups and wore a bandage around his chest before tip-off. Though he led the Mavericks to Game 2 victories in their previous three series and came out hunting offense in the midrange, Doncic couldn’t keep up his frenetic scoring pace and had just nine points in the second half.
“I was okay [physically],” he said. “We’ve got to make some more shots. I think my turnovers and my missed free throws cost us the game. I’ve got to do way better in those two categories.”
The Celtics finished 10 for 39 (25.6 percent) from deep, their second-worst outside shooting night of the playoffs. Tatum scored 18 points on 6-for-22 shooting, but he dished 12 assists and regularly found Jrue Holiday for cutting baskets to buoy Boston’s unsteady attack. Holiday paced the Celtics with 26 points and 11 rebounds, and he hit a three-pointer and came up with a key offensive rebound to set up a White three-pointer on back-to-back possessions in crunchtime.
“[Tatum] was getting to the paint, getting double teams, making the right plays and finding me,” Holiday said. “He has that vision as a playmaker.”
While all five Dallas starters finished in double figures, its second unit combined for just nine points. Coach Jason Kidd turned to backups Maxi Kleber and Dante Exum, but neither was able to make an impact. Kleber, who missed much of Dallas’s postseason run with a shoulder injury, missed on all four of his shots, leaving Kidd without enough production from his frontcourt rotation.
The series shifts to Dallas’s American Airlines Center for Game 3 on Wednesday with Boston in full command, knowing it protected its home court — winning a pretty Game 1 and an ugly Game 2 — without getting a signature performance from Tatum. The Mavericks’ to-do list remains unchanged: They need Irving to get on track, Washington to find his range and their bench players to contribute.
The sighs of relief will be deep for the Celtics, who lost Game 2 in the first round because they were outshot by Miami, which got red hot from deep. Then they dropped Game 2 in the second round against Cleveland after their worst outside shooting performance of this playoff run. This time, they made sure the three-point line didn’t decide the game by keeping their wits and continuing to hold the Mavericks’ supporting cast in check.