{"id":613630,"date":"2026-02-20T12:29:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/613630\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T12:29:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T12:29:15","slug":"how-the-celtics-avoided-disaster-in-win-over-warriors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/613630\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Celtics avoided disaster in win over Warriors"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Sometimes, switches flip in an instant. That was the case on Thursday night. The Boston Celtics jumped out to a massive lead in the second quarter, completely dominating the Golden State Warriors.<\/p>\n

Then, the fourth came along. Boston turnovers and Golden State threes led Joe Mazzulla to put his top rotation guys back in the game. But even then, the Warriors kept fighting.<\/p>\n

What happened in between the lines?<\/p>\n

Golden State knows how to swing momentum. \u201cIf you take a look at the Warriors as a team, they play a ton of close games, and a lot of it has to do with just their ability to go on runs and do that,\u201d Mazzulla said post-game.<\/p>\n

Boston opened the final frame with Payton Pritchard, Baylor Scheierman, Ron Harper Jr., Jordan Walsh, and Luka Garza. The Warriors went on a 12-3 run, and Mazzulla called a timeout with 9:49 to go in the fourth.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the shots were falling for the Warriors. And they weren\u2019t for the Celtics. But Golden State\u2019s ball pressure had a lot to do with that. They upped their intensity and even broke out a press that Pritchard hasn\u2019t seen in years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven’t seen a diamond press like that in a long time,\u201d Pritchard said. \u201cMaybe since college or even AAU days. So, definitely gotta do a better job of just handling.<\/p>\n

For those wondering, this is a diamond press.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

null<\/p>\n

via BasketballForCoaches.com<\/p>\n

\"Warriors<\/p>\n

Warriors press vs. Celtics on 2\/19<\/p>\n

But it was more than that. The Warriors were up in the Celtics\u2019 airspace. They stayed connected in the pick-and-roll. They bodied Boston off the ball, sapping their opponents’ energy. They did everything in their power to make the Celtics uncomfortable, and it worked.<\/p>\n

Well, it worked up to a certain point. If it truly worked, then the Warriors would have won the game. So, what happened?<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, coming off the break, I thought our guys had a great attention to detail, had a great purpose to what we did,\u201d Mazzulla said. \u201cAnd in the last 10-and-a-half minutes, Golden State took it to a different level. And we were forced to be poised, we were forced to have to make plays, we were forced to have to make shots, and get stops. So, that’s how they play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basketball isn\u2019t always pretty. If defense wins championships, then inherently, most wins are ugly. And that\u2019s how the Celtics held on for dear life in the midst of Golden State\u2019s fourth-quarter surge.<\/p>\n

With the rumbling of the Chase Center crowd ringing in their ears, the Celtics, play by play, held their ground.<\/p>\n

A Scheierman drive here. A Sam Hauser backdoor cut there. They found ways to score. But perhaps most importantly, they trusted Pritchard.<\/p>\n

Pritchard was an absolute bucket in the fourth quarter. He had eight points on 3-of-7 shooting from the field and 2-of-3 from deep, but it wasn\u2019t the quantity with which Pritchard scored that made his buckets stand out. It was the timing.<\/p>\n

He assisted Hauser on his backdoor cut and then got a bucket of his own shortly after, halting Golden State\u2019s momentum.<\/p>\n

By the six-minute mark, the Warriors had cut a 29-point lead down to just 12. Then, Pritchard nailed two straight threes to pad Boston\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

He just found a way to slow down the Warriors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Sometimes, switches flip in an instant. That was the case on Thursday night. The Boston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,75,46,479,164,4025,4024,6,66376,66682,255],"class_list":{"0":"post-613630","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golden-state-warriors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-celtics","11":"tag-golden-state","12":"tag-golden-state-warriors","13":"tag-goldenstate","14":"tag-goldenstatewarriors","15":"tag-nba","16":"tag-top-celtics","17":"tag-top-story-2","18":"tag-warriors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116102966723150574","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}