It was a great win, but I came away super annoyed at Mazzulla for sitting on both of his overtime time outs as he stood by and watched his team's final play offense just collapse under pressure from the Bucks D. If you are going to play Grant 47 minutes (and Muscala and White 43 minutes) then you owe it to those guys not to quit on them before the final buzzer. They sent the game into OT with a final seconds ATO play (improbable as that was) and they could have tried another one but Mazzulla instead just let them get shut down.
Some aspects of player usage were also weird in this game. Rob played just 4 very effective minutes in the first half and then 9 less effective minutes in the second. 13 total. Maybe he was on a strict minutes limit, although Mazzulla denied this. But if Mazzulla was telling the truth, and Rob was good to go, it was a terrible coaching move to not play Rob in the OT. Muscala's legs were shot and he was near useless, the one three he attempted was a miss by a mile. Maybe something is up with Rob.
An impressive game for Muscala although he faded late. He had his 37th career start in his 478th career game. He set his NBA career highs for minutes played and FGA. He got his first ever NBA technical foul, when he dunked and then was called for taunting the Bucks bench. He had 18 points, 8 rebounds, a steal, and a turnover for the game. But most of that damage was done in the first quarter, when he scored 10 points on 4 of 6 shooting. In Q2, he scored 3 points on 1-5. In Q3, 5 points on 2 of 4. Q4/OT, 0 points on 1 missed shot. His last couple of shot attempts were way off.
Derrick White was also excellent but gassed at the end. 27 points, 12 assists, 3 steals, 2 rebounds, 3 turnovers in 43 minutes. He shot 10 of 24 from the field.
Grant Williams was the iron man, going 47 minutes and putting up a double-double (12-10) with 4 assists. Five turnovers.
Sam Hauser, in 39 minutes, had 15 points and 9 rebounds. He was only 3-8 from three, but one of his makes was an improbable for him final seconds ATO play where he took the inbounds pass, took a couple of dribbles, and then hit a deep three in Middleton's face. Don't think he's ever hit one like that before and may never again.
Blake played 24 minutes, had a great statistical line, and - swear to God - there was a short stretch in the third quarter where he basically took over the game. He scored 15 points on 6-9 shooting along with 6 rebounds, 6 assists, a steal, a block, and drew 2 key charges, one on Giannis and the other on Lopez (to send Lopez out of the game with foul trouble).
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWbGaahuUjk
There were 3 long stretches towards the end of the second, third, and fourth quarters where the Celtics were just shut down completely. Had they been able to avoid one of those it might have ended better.
