Jayson Tatum turns in clunker in Game 1 ... but Celtics win anyway

BOSTON -- With the NBA Finals opening on Thursday night, there was plenty of excitement from Celtics fans and from within the Celtics organization that Game 1 would be a massive night for young superstar Jayson Tatum. There was plenty of anticipation from Tatum himself, too.

Yet instead of an explosive game on the sport's biggest stage, the world got to see a clunker from Tatum -- at least in terms of scoring.

Tatum did contribute significantly to the win with a game-high 13 assists, making the most of the defensive attention paid to him by finding teammates for open looks. That is, quite obviously, a valuable contribution ... but Tatum didn't make the All-NBA First Team because of his distribution skills. He made it because he's an elite scorer. In this one, he surely was not.

Tatum's night began with a miss on the first shot of the night. On the Celtics' next possession, he airballed a three. 

A little over three minutes later, Tatum headed to the line for a pair of free throws. He missed them both.

That was the start of the night for the Celtics' leading scorer, and it didn't get a whole lot better.

At halftime, Tatum had just eight points. After three quarters, he had just 12 points.

And he didn't score at all in the fourth quarter.

He finished the night shooting a grisly 3-for-17 from the field, including 1-for-5 from three-point range.

The player who averaged 27 points per game in the regular season and playoffs managed just 12 points in his Finals debut.

And yet ... the Celtics still won. By a dozen points.

That win, of course, came thanks to an insane fourth-quarter surge powered by Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Al Horford and then Marcus Smart.

Brown scored 10 points in the opening 4:22 of the fourth quarter, and White hit a pair of threes on back-to-back possessions to tie the game at 103 apiece, and Horford nailed a pair of threes and a mid-range jumper to give Boston an eight-point lead. Smart hit a couple of his own threes to stretch that lead even further. All the while, the Celtics' defense that everybody heard about for the past four days showed up in a big way, limiting Golden State to just 16 points in the final quarter.

It was a genuinely unbelievable stretch of basketball. In fact, it was historic.

And they did it, really, with Tatum serving as a spectator/decoy for the bulk of the final quarter. Tatum did have four assists in the fourth quarter, including two of Horford's makes, but he only took two shots, and he missed them both.

"We've talked about it throughout the year and I've talked to him at length about impacting the game when he's not having his best offensive night. So, he did that tonight," head coach Ime Udoka said after the 120-108 Celtics win. "Obviously, going 3-for-17, that's usually not gonna happen. But what he did well and did early was get others involved -- seven of nine assists early in the game, finished with 13. And the shot's not falling, he still attracts a good amount of attention. He made the right plays, and I love his growth and progression in those areas, where he's still guarding on the defensive end, still getting others involved, not pouting about his shots, and trying to play through some mistakes and some physicality that they were playing with him."

Udoka added: "That's why we're a team. We don't rely on one guy."

The Celtics didn't rely on Tatum to power this win. But they may be able to lean on him in Sunday night's Game 2. Twice this postseason, Tatum has scored 12 or fewer points in a game. Coming off a 10-point game in Milwaukee, Tatum dropped 30 in a win the following game. After another 10-point game in a loss to Miami, Tatum responded with a 31-point showing in another Boston win.

That the Celtics were able to overcome the lack of scoring from Tatum in this game figures to serve them well.

Considering the Celtics trailed by 12 points coming out of an ugly third quarter in which Tatum shot 1-for-6 from the floor, the poor shooting night for Tatum figured to be a big story on a bad night for Boston. Instead, given the remarkable final quarter from Tatum's teammates, the lack of scoring from Tatum can now become a positive for the Celtics going forward.

This was a game where defensive breakdowns allowed Stephen Curry to drop 21 points in the first quarter en route to draining 12 threes. It was a game with a lopsided third quarter, not completely dissimilar to Boston's Game 1 showing in Miami. It was a game where Jayson Tatum scored 12 points while shooting 17.6 percent from the field. And it was a game that looked like a textbook Game 1 loss for the road team in the NBA Finals.

Yet ... it was a Game 1 win for Boston -- the first Game 1 win by a road team in the Finals since 2013, and just the second in the last 18 years.

If the Celtics can win that game -- and by a dozen points, no less -- then they have a whole lot to feel good about as they look forward to the remainder of this series.

You can email Michael Hurley or find him on Twitter @michaelFhurley.