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I love making excuses.
There’s something deeply satisfying about explaining why failure doesn’t matter. With the proper ingredients, I can chalk up even the most damning failures to nothing more than a procedural matter, all perfectly acceptable in the infinitely variable cosmos.
The Celtics lost their In-Season Tournament game against the Indiana Pacers, but it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter. In fact, the In-Season Tournament only matters if you want it to, and—because I am hard-wired to shield myself from emotional distress—I have decided that it doesn’t matter.
The NBA developed the In-Season Tournament to hopefully drum-up some fan interest around a notoriously dead part of the season, also known as right now. But for the players and coaches, this is basically an optional extra-credit assignment, like that time I wrote a parody of “It’s the End of the World as we Know it” by R.E.M. for my astronomy class.
I could have just done a research paper like everybody else, but in the spirit of you-only-take-college-astronomy-to-fulfill-a-science-requirement-once, I decided to go the extra mile. But the song only mattered because I cared about it, and I could have just as easily decided that it was too much work and that R.E.M. is an overrated band. I would never, but I could have.
The Celtics definitely cared about the In-Season Tournament, but clearly not enough to go full-throttle-psycho-mode and cut their rotation down to six or seven like it’s the NBA Finals. Kristaps Porzingis sat out the game in favor of managing his calf injury, and both Luke Kornet and Dalano Banton saw double-digit minutes.
In short, the Celtics were willing to give this game their all, but by no means willing to risk playing Al Horford 44 minutes like he’s Rajon Rondo in Game 7 of the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals. That’s definitely the right call, though Porzingis’ injury history means getting a playable backup big behind Horford to take some miles off them both.
The Pacers, on the other hand, pulled out the rotary phone from the late eighties and dialed all the way in for this game. They ran essentially a seven-man rotation, and yanked Andrew Nembhard and T.J. McConnell the second it became clear they would get bullied. Head coach Rick Carlisle was not messing around, and neither was his best player.
Tyrese Haliburton played 40 minutes and dropped his first career triple-double, but beyond that he was just the best player on a floor he shared with Jayson Tatum. He pulled out his Mary Poppins bag and started pulling buckets out of it. The Celtics actually cooked up a solid comeback in the fourth quarter, but Haliburton said absolutely not, converting a totally-baller 4-point-play that sent the Celtics packing.
I don’t doubt that Celtics fans would have reacted in kind if this game was at the Garden, but it seems like the Pacers take a special kind of pride in the In-Season Tournament. They have now defeated the 76ers and Celtics on these fun-colored courts, and their players celebrated every bucket like it’s a playoff game.
I have a friend that I play fantasy football with, and when his team underperforms, he accuses them of not “wanting it” enough. For the Celtics, a team whose championship expectations are so far through the roof you might have to alert local aircraft, I’d imagine it would be difficult to want this game more than the Pacers, a wily young team that only knows how to slam the gas pedal.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to take away, but remember: we’re making excuses. This was just another regular season game, complete with regular season lessons and regular season levels of concern.
If you’ve been screaming at your phone, computer, or Samsung Smart Fridge for the last 700 words calling me a fraud, you’re not completely wrong. I’ve said many times that the In-Season Tournament does matter, and that players and fans should care about it for the simple fact that it’s fun.
And I did care about it! I enjoyed rooting for the Celtics to win this thing, and would have continued to care about the result had they won. But now that they’re out, the tournament no longer matters. It’s a Celtics-centric point of view, but probably one that a lot of teams share. If I was from Sacramento—who lost to the New Orleans Pelicans last night—I’d feel the same way.
That’s the beauty of an optional assignment. It matters as much or as little as you want, and only for as long as you want it to. Perhaps I’ll decide it matters once again once the semifinals begin in Las Vegas, but who knows. Perhaps I’ll just become Bill Murray from Meatballs, and begin maniacally repeating that it just doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter! It just doesn’t matter!
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