Kyrie Irving Drops His Nuts On The Entire Pacers Defense With A Huge Game Winner

What a thriller. I may be delirious hopped up on all sorts of medicine right now but I know a clutch play when i see one and Kyrie Irving keeping his dribble alive and faking out the entire Pacers defense for what has to be the easiest game winner of his life could not have come at a better time. I wrote this morning that this was a prime opportunity for the Celtics to show us something, with their potential playoff run in the balance given whether or not they get homecourt, it was as must win as they come. I begged, prayed, that this team would show us a 48 minute effort and I am happy to report that’s exactly what they gave. The Pacers kept coming like we knew they would, and it was up to the Celtics to execute at a high level on both ends down the stretch in order to pull out the win. If this was a little preview of what a series might look like, it’s going to be stressful as hell. They weren’t perfect, their inability to defend the P&R is still a little concerning, they had issues keeping the Pacers bigs off the rim following drives, things that thankfully are all correctable moving forward. I’m just happy that in a situation where it was time to nut up or shut up the Celts didn’t fold. Feels like it’s been a while since we’ve seen that.

As awesome as the Kyrie game winner was, how about this shot from Smart?

This just bought him 3 terrible shot selection threes in my book. His energy was great all night too, and really it’s no surprise this team looked a lot better defensively given their new starting lineup. Brad would be silly to go back to how things were before, not when things are clicking like this. Sure it was just one win, but it was one the Celtics absolutely had to have but they can’t look past BKN tomorrow night. That’s a team that can score on you in bunches and we already saw D’Angelo Russell bury this team once before this season.

I’ll have more tomorrow of course, but collectively let us all exhale that for once, the Celtics didn’t blow it.