BOSTON — As the Celtics walked toward their tunnel at halftime Sunday afternoon, the crowd didn’t seem to know how to react. A few fans clapped. Most others stayed silent. Across the arena, nerves hid the postseason excitement that was so present earlier in the game.
The uneasy atmosphere inside TD Garden reflected Boston’s rocky start to Game 1 of its first-round series against the Orlando Magic. After losing all of a double-digit lead to trail by one point at the break, the Celtics had no room to feel comfortable. In the locker room, Jrue Holiday said he and his teammates didn’t need to say much. They already knew the main problem. They weren’t playing with as much aggression as the young and hungry Magic.
“We just knew, going into the third, we needed some energy,” Al Horford told The Athletic. “And Jrue took over. He lifted us. Offensively and defensively, he totally changed the game.”
Two minutes into the third quarter of what would become a 103-86 Celtics win, Holiday attached himself to Franz Wagner to avoid an approaching screen. Wagner drove to the basket, but Holiday stayed with the talented Magic wing and helped to force an ugly shot attempt. When it bounced off the top of the backboard, Holiday tapped the rebound to teammate Jaylen Brown and took off running in transition. After catching an outlet pass from Brown, Holiday created space for a stepback 3-pointer. Cash.
The following possession almost looked like a replay of the previous one, except this time Holiday was covering Paolo Banchero. Again, Holiday worked hard enough that the Magic couldn’t screen him. Again, Holiday influenced a miss. And again, he tapped out the rebound to a teammate before receiving the ball on a fast break. Instead of pulling up for another 3-pointer, Holiday slid a pretty bounce pass to Derrick White for a layup that pushed the Celtics’ run to 7-0 to start the second half. Over the entire third quarter, they outscored the Magic 30-18.
Holiday said the Celtics turned it up after halftime. He neglected to add that he was the one who did it for them.
“He’s a winner,” Horford said. “He knows how to play. And when he has those kind of plays, that just gets us going. It puts us in a different place.”
Holiday only scored nine points. He only had six field goal attempts. He still charged the Celtics on both ends.
“That’s the Jrue I love, you know what I mean?” Brown said. “That’s the Jrue I remember competing against.”
The third quarter provided vintage Holiday minutes. He fought bigger players in the low post. He chased Orlando’s powerful wings around the perimeter. He hustled for rebounds, converted defense into offense and carried the rest of the Celtics along with him. About four minutes into the third quarter, Holiday stole the ball from Wagner near mid-court and pulled up for another 3. His make, which gave the Celtics a 63-53 lead, forced the Magic to call a timeout. Often reserved on the court, Holiday celebrated with a loud scream while walking toward the Boston huddle.
“It’s playoff basketball,” Holiday said, “so you can feel the energy in the arena. You can feel it in the air. You can feel it in the team. And it’s just one of those feelings, like, ‘We’re here.’”
In Game 1, Holiday reintroduced himself. One game won’t eliminate the doubters who showed up during his shooting slump earlier this season, but the mighty effort offered hope that Holiday could once again ascend the same way he did last spring. During the Celtics’ run to the championship, he seemed to get better and better round by round.
Following a quiet opening series against the Heat, Holiday averaged 15.1 points, 6.6 rebounds and 4.4 assists over Boston’s final 14 playoff games while taking on some of the most challenging defensive assignments. An unforgettable steal against the Indiana Pacers’ Andrew Nembhard, which sealed Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals, delivered the peak Holiday experience. At his best, nobody better combines instincts, guts and physical ability.
Now that Holiday is 34, it’s fair to question whether some of that physical ability is lost. He scored 11.1 points per game this season for his lowest average since his rookie season. He shot 35.3 percent on 3-point attempts, his lowest mark since 2019-20. Still, his numbers started to tick back up late in the regular season as if he was ramping up for the bigger games to come.
Plus, Brown said, “Regular season is different from the playoffs.”
Brown implied that everybody can forget about Holiday’s quiet regular season. The postseason has arrived. It’s time for the intensity to rise. Time for the difficulty level to increase. Time for the real winners to stand up.
“Jrue, he loves the environment just as much as I do,” said Brown, who said his injured right knee felt better. “You could see him picking up guys and blowing through screens and just making plays. And when we get that Jrue, it’s a good sign for us.”
One of the best signs the Celtics could have seen in the playoff opener.
“He’s an innate competitor,” Joe Mazzulla said. “And sometimes he takes a back seat because of the type of guys that we have. I thought tonight, he put the team on his back from that passion and emotion standpoint. And that’s why Jrue Holiday is Jrue Holiday. So we’re lucky to have him. We’re going to need that every single night. But we do feed off his physicality and his presence.”
The rest of the backcourt also delivered. White scored 30 points on 10-for-18 shooting, including 7-for-12 on 3-point attempts. Payton Pritchard added 19 points in 24 minutes off the bench. The Celtics needed their production with Brown, Jayson Tatum and Kristaps Porziņģis combining to score 38 points on 15-for-44 shooting. Following the game, Tatum received an X-ray on his right wrist after a hard fall in the second half, but he said the imaging came back clean and he was “all right” physically. He kept playing after the fall.
Even if he shows no ill effects from the issue, the Celtics will need to earn their baskets against Orlando’s big and physical defense, which ranked second during the regular season and does a great job preventing 3-point attempts. Boston, which averaged an NBA-record 48.2 3-point attempts during the regular season, only generated 37 on Sunday. With one of their weapons neutralized, the Celtics needed to break open Game 1 with their energy.
“I think that in the first half, they kind of controlled the intensity level of the game,” said Brown. “They were more physical than us, and in the second half, we kind of shifted that. We gotta have that mentality all series long. We gotta have the hunter mentality, be more physical, set the tone, set the intensity of the game. I think Orlando did a great job of that in the first half, so, it’s gonna be a lot of that this series. Can’t expect nothing less. It’s gonna be more of a fight than it is skill. Our guys gotta be ready to fight.”
Holiday was ready in Game 1.
“When he’s aggressive for us, we’re a different team,” said Mazzulla. “And it takes everybody to do that. Tonight, it started from his defense, and he changed it for us.”
(Top photo of Jrue Holiday: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
