The Wizards entered Friday night with just one victory against a team with a winning record all season. That figure seemed unlikely to change in a road game against the Celtics, the NBA’s best team.
But in the first half, the low profile of the opponent seemed to bore Boston. The Wizards blitzed the Celtics with one transition chance after another and opened up an 8-point lead early in the third quarter.
On the Celtics bench, coach Joe Mazzulla could sense his players’ tension but was unsure why it existed. Fans and oddsmakers and perhaps even his own players assumed that this night would result in an easy win for the home team, and suddenly it wasn’t. So before focusing on tactical adjustments, Mazzulla tried levity.
He asked someone on the bench to tell a joke, or even just laugh or smile about something. Mazzulla told his own joke that he later claimed was quite funny, and Jayson Tatum said was not. Tatum then added his own attempt at humor. Even if no stand-up careers would be launched from the impromptu comedy minute, the purpose of the levity was clear.
“We put so much pressure on ourselves that we’ve got to get back to remembering to have fun in those moments,” Tatum said. “It’s not always going to go the way that, you know, everybody thinks it’s supposed to, but it’s never as bad as it seems.”
Before long, the 8-point deficit was flipped into a 15-point lead. The night was fixed long before it could turn sour, and the Celtics held off a late Wizards rally to secure a 133-129 win.
The Celtics hold a five-game lead in the Eastern Conference with just 30 remaining, so there are bound to be more nights like this over the next two months when it might be challenging to summon motivation and meaning.
Mazzulla understands there will be lulls like there were in the first half Friday, when Washington piled up 71 points, including a startling 26 on transition chances. He just wants his team to be able to recognize these moments and find a way out.
He said a key will be avoiding any assumptions that a night will be easy, no matter how much an opponent has been pushed around by others.
“Just because we’re playing a team that has a record of whatever their record is [9-42] doesn’t mean we should be up by a certain amount,” Mazzulla said. “I think it’s pretty arrogant to think that. I think getting away from having an expectation that the game is going to go a certain way, and more just kind of thriving and building an awareness to being exactly where we’re at, and just working through it.”
Maybe the Celtics realized this in the third quarter, when they shot 59.1 percent from the field, forced six turnovers, and held the Wizards to 16 points. Or maybe the Wizards were simply regressing to the mean.
Regardless, it ended up providing another teaching point that likely has more value than a 40-point romp. For example, Mazzulla said he went over two unique game scenarios during the morning’s shootaround, and both came into play Friday night, instantly putting them into practice. Also, it should be pointed out, these lessons have often coincided with wins, so they are hardly damaging.
“We have to have that humility of like, ‘OK, we have to earn this win again and again and again,’ " Kristaps Porzingis said. “It’s tough.”
Porzingis, who shrugged off not being selected for next weekend’s All-Star Game, was the focal point of the offense. The Celtics consistently looked to hunt mismatches against a Wizards team that generally plays without a true center, and Porzingis consistently punished his former teammates with post-ups. He made 14 of 14 free throws and finished with 34 points and 11 rebounds.
Tatum led in scoring with 35 points, to go with 10 rebounds, and 8 assists.
Corey Kispert and Deni Avdija scored 24 points apiece for the Wizards, who connected on 20 of 47 3-point attempts.
Washington raced to an early 33-25 lead and made 8 of 16 3-pointers in the second quarter, while Boston struggled to convert decent looks in the paint. The most damaging sequence came in the final 57 seconds, when Kyle Kuzma, Jordan Poole, and Avdija combined to drill three 3-pointers in a row to craft the 9-0 burst that gave their team a surprising 71-64 halftime lead.
The Celtics pushed back in the third quarter by picking up the defensive intensity, slowing the Wizards’ attack and forcing them to operate in the halfcourt, where little came easily. The Wizards mustered just 7 points over the first seven minutes.
And with Washington leading, 78-76, the Celtics went on a loud 24-9 run to close the third, with Tatum scoring 9 straight points for the hosts over the final 1:38 and giving them a 100-87 lead.
The Celtics appeared to be in control leading by 15 points with just 3 minutes, 20 seconds remaining. But one final lull at least made things interesting. An Avdija dunk pulled the Wizards within 131-127 with 30.7 seconds left.
Boston had been 24 for 24 from the foul line before Al Horford made just one of two free throws, but at the other end Avdija missed a 3-pointer that would have made it a 2-point game.
“We did a lot of good things out there and we had to figure it out,” Tatum said. “But a win is a win, so we’ll take it.”
Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at adam.himmelsbach@globe.com. Follow him @adamhimmelsbach.