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MINNEAPOLIS — Without much time left on the shot clock, Derrick White didn’t have many options when he caught the ball in the right corner with two minutes left Thursday night. Even after Julius Randle hustled out to the arc with a solid defensive effort, White decided to let a long jump shot fly. A brief pump fake didn’t buy the Celtics guard much space.
Thanks to the tight defense, he didn’t have his usual rhythm on the release. Advertisement “Obviously, I just felt like I was falling out of bounds,” White said, “so just kind of throw it up at the rim and hope for the best.” Though White didn’t call bank, his shot headed several feet to the right of the rim.
As the ball headed straight for the backboard, he wondered whether he would receive a lucky bounce. “It looked like it had a chance to bank in,” White said. “So that’s what I was hoping for.
” After the ball kissed off the backboard and through the net, White’s wide smile explained just how appreciative he was of the good fortune. The Celtics might not have needed a win like their 118-115 road victory against the Timberwolves. Still, after an unusually turbulent December, they sure did seem to enjoy finding ways to overcome a hot shooting performance from Minnesota.
BANK'S OPEN 💸 pic.twitter.com/vww1RZGPk4 — Boston Celtics (@celtics) January 3, 2025 After Anthony Edwards missed a game-tying 3-pointer at the final buzzer, Jayson Tatum threw his arms into the air in an apparent sign of relief.
In the locker room afterward, the Celtics players marveled at Neemias Queta’s unblockable hook shot and cracked jokes about the bucket an official review took away from the center. Though the team needed to board a flight to Houston for the second leg of a back-to-back, many of the players seemed in no rush to leave the locker room. They savored the details of their quality win instead.
It seemed to serve as medicine to them. White, who didn’t believe he played his best basketball throughout December, put pressure on himself to respond against the Timberwolves. He finished with 26 points, two blocks and two charges taken.
Thirteen of White’s points came in the fourth quarter, including several key buckets after the Timberwolves briefly took a lead early in the period. Advertisement “Kind of just part of the season,” White said of his recent struggles. “There are ups and there are downs, but kind of just felt like I needed to do a little bit more.
And I feel like you’re always your worst critic, so just try to be a little better and just come out here with the right mindset, the right energy and just try to help us win games.” Fresh off an 8-6 December that matched the worst calendar month of Joe Mazzulla’s head-coaching tenure, the Celtics wanted to start a brutal January stretch the right way. Mazzulla, forever on the hunt for a lesson to learn, called it fun to see his team “work through some stuff.
” He believed the Boston players had the right mentality to attack the upcoming month, which will feature road games against seven of the top eight teams in the Western Conference, plus the Warriors who ended Thursday night in 10th place. After the downs of December, the Celtics sounded eager to embrace the challenge and fight to play with their usual identity again. “Definitely not good enough for our standard we want to set here,” Kristaps Porziņģis said of the recent inconsistency, “but I think it’s a part of being this caliber team.
And I think especially it’s almost a little bit necessary humbling that we need to understand that there’s hungry teams coming after us and it’s not going to be smooth sailing like it was maybe last year. And that’s a good thing. I think every time these kind of things happen there’s some adversity and we have to respond to that.
And we believe now that we have to turn the tide a little bit and adjust some things and get better as a team.” Tatum started doing his part hours before tipoff. The Celtics often assign him to defend centers because of how matching up that way limits opposing pick-and-roll attacks, but he wanted to handle one of Minnesota’s perimeter players instead.
Tatum asked Mazzulla to guard Edwards. “We just had a talk this morning,” Tatum said, “knowing we had a few guys out, so our lineup was gonna be different. So just another way to insert yourself into the game and be focused and locked in.
If you’re guarding the other team’s best player, even if you’re not in rhythm offensively you’ve got to be locked in defensively. So just another way to get yourself going.” Advertisement Tatum and Edwards have a little bit of history.
In the Netflix documentary “Starting 5,” Edwards suggested people were “tripping” calling Tatum the best player in the league. If that comment from last season drove Tatum to demand the matchup, he didn’t acknowledge it when asked why he approached Mazzulla about defending Edwards. Tatum said the motivation behind the decision went deeper than his hope to get himself going.
He wanted to lift his team. He wanted to send a message that January won’t go the same way December did. “That’s part of it,” Tatum said.
“We had a tough December. Not our normal standard. Looking forward to January.
It’s a great opportunity to get back to our identity, and no better way than to start off our road trip down two starters and still figure out a way to win the game. So tonight was a lot of fun.” Though Edwards finished with just 15 points, his third-lowest total of the season, Tatum didn’t deserve all of the credit.
Boston sent enough double-teams for Edwards to rant about the style the strategy forces him to play. He scoffed at the idea that Tatum’s length impacted him. “Not at all,” Edwards said.
“I get guarded by Jaden (McDaniels) in practice. So, length is no (problem). Nothing is no problem.
If I’m getting double-teamed, it don’t matter who in front of me.” Even Tatum said guarding Edwards “wasn’t a one-man job” and Boston “didn’t want to play him one-on-one.” The symbol of Tatum wanting to guard Edwards still mattered inside the Celtics locker room.
White said Mazzulla likely loved Tatum’s request “more than anybody.” Indeed, Mazzulla called Tatum’s desire to take on the matchup “key for us to get to where we want to get to.” “He’s one of the best defenders we’ve got on the team,” White said.
“And it’s nice when your star player wants to take on that challenge.” Mazzulla appreciated the Celtics’ attention to detail in what he called a “great team win.” Without Porziņģis (ankle) and Jaylen Brown (shoulder), Boston registered its fourth-most efficient offensive output of the season by scoring 137.
3 points per possession against the NBA’s sixth-ranked defense. It took a big offensive performance to top the Timberwolves on a night they set a season high in 3-point percentage (53.8 percent) and finished one 3-point make shy of matching their season high.
Advertisement Brown and Porziņģis could return soon. Mazzulla said Brown, who suffered the injury Tuesday during a win against Toronto, will be day to day. Porzingis, who went through an on-court workout at Celtics shootaround Thursday morning, said his sprained left ankle felt much better than it had.
He said he’s “getting close” to rejoining the Boston lineup after his latest injury this season. “I’m not going to lie, it’s super annoying, super frustrating to not be able to catch a good rhythm,” Porzingis said, “and already, boom, again some small thing happens and you’re out for a couple of games and dealing with this. But this is part of the life we chose.
My body is very particular so these things can happen to me. I have to make sure I do everything I can to prevent these things as much as possible.” December wasn’t just frustrating for Porzingis, who has missed four straight games with the ankle injury.
Following the uneven month, the Celtics are hoping to restore their superiority against teams gunning for them. “We knew people were going to come after us,” Porziņģis said. “And there’s obviously a little bit of this comfort that, we just (won a championship), we know how to do it, we’ll be there again for sure.
A little bit of that. As good as Joe is at trying to avoid that and keeping us on edge, it’s an uphill battle — I don’t want to say uphill battle — but it’s a tough battle he has to battle for himself, for the team, to lead us as a group. He’s doing a phenomenal job with the coaching staff and preparing us and getting us in that hungry mindset that we need to be in to keep hunting.
” (Photo of Derrick White: Jesse Johnson / Imagn Images).
