Celtics ‘embrace the chaos’ as they take control of Pacers’ speed in Game 2 win

BOSTON — The Indiana Pacers are often a blur, but the Boston Celtics are getting acclimated. If Game 1 was a whirlwind, Game 2 brought clarity.

“When you play in the chaos, you have to embrace the chaos,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said after Boston beat Indiana 126-110 to take a 2-0 series lead. “So there’s going to be possessions where it is chaotic, and you just have to be ready to handle it. And I thought our guys did a good job of handling it with just multiple efforts.”

While Indiana’s identity is rooted in its free-flowing nature, Boston’s adaptability gives it a similar level of volatility.

“I guess chaos with chaos, right?” Jrue Holiday said. “I think that we, just like them, I think they do a great job of having, it seems like, controlled chaos.”

Boston’s chaos was to mix in some hybrid zone concepts within its switches. Indiana will try to force the switch by running over the screen, then revert to the other direction.

The Celtics would counter by having defenders zone the paint in certain scenarios to provide a backstop for the perimeter defenders being aggressive. When the Pacers would try to discombobulate the Celtics’ defensive connectivity, Boston would find a way to unwind whatever knot it was getting tied into.

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“I think that we were just kind of scrambling for each other and playing off each other,” Holiday said. “We know they like to get into the paint and kind of make tougher plays in there, but I think because we’re long and athletic, we can take some of those things away and really just try to speed them up as much as possible.”

Speeding the Pacers up? They turn on their afterburners at the opening tip. Trying to speed up the team that plays sped up seems counterintuitive.

That’s the irony of the Celtics. They don’t have to just fight against what an opponent is trying to do. The Celtics lean into it. Embrace the chaos.

The Celtics had to find their unpredictability and dare the Pacers to solve them instead. That opportunity presented itself when Luke Kornet went out with a wrist strain and Mazzulla had to throw his curveball.

In came Oshae Brissett, former Pacer, bringer of chaos. His game is centered on flying around, skying for rebounds and cutting for dunks.

Indiana welcomed Brissett’s playing style and gave him a platform. He even was a starter there for some time. When the Celtics signed him in July, he seemed slated for the rotation but played just 16 minutes in the postseason entering Thursday night.

Brissett knows how the Pacers play. He understands their tendencies. He has played these guys in practice for years. This was the moment for him to show why the Celtics signed him.

And as soon as he got in there, Indiana thought it saw an easy advantage and went right for it. A Myles Turner post-up that went nowhere. A lob over the top to him that Brissett smacked away like he’d known it was coming all along.

Mazzulla has drilled the Celtics on every position, in every lineup, so they can step into these random matchups at the sprain of a wrist. After the second unit got torched early in Game 1, he was a big part of why the Celtics’ second unit went on a 17-0 run and seized control of the game.

“That’s something that Joe really likes,” Brissett said. “We play sometimes with two bigs or one or none, so everyone out there has to know every single position, whether you’re off the ball or in the action.

“We don’t know what they’re about to throw out, so we’ve gotta be prepared and ready.”

In these moments, a team hopes a player coming in cold off the bench can either have the energy or the awareness.

“I was just excited. I’m still excited,” Brissett said. “I’m trying to calm myself down.”

But Brissett executed his role well. He finished plays with good contests and rebounds, giving Holiday and Jaylen Brown the freedom to advance the ball and work their way through the Pacers’ defense.

“We haven’t done that too much all year. That was a newer look for us,” Brown said of the small lineups with Brissett. “But I thought that we won those minutes. Oshae came in, (Xavier Tillman) came in, and we were able to still rebound and get out and run. So I think the key in that group is rebounding, but that also allows us to play fast, to match their speed a little bit better and get that step in transition.”

Leading the transition was often Holiday, who has emerged at the perfect time. The Celtics’ jack-of-all-trades has finally taken on a significant offensive role after spending months as an afterthought on that side of the ball.

In Game 2, he became the first player with 10 assists and 80 percent shooting in a conference finals game since the year he was born, 1990, per StatMuse. Holiday often spends his time parked in the corner, getting spot-up shots or hammering guards down in the post. Sometimes he is the pivot point in the middle of the floor to reroute the ball with his deft touch passes.

But in the postseason, he has a feel for how to control the tempo. If there is anything championship experience brings, it’s an innate sense for when to push and when to stabilize. So whatever lineup he was in, he knew how to run it.

“The way that they play, they move the ball, they move bodies and they play fast, but we can also do that,” Holiday said. “We can go small, we can go big, we can play fast, we can slow down and execute. I think adding Oshae out there is just a different element where all five guys, if we were switching or if we’re staying with our men, we’re capable of doing so many different things.”

Mazzulla described a three-step process for knocking out Indiana’s transition offense, and it starts on the other end. The Celtics have to be organized on offense to be on solid footing at the other end.

“So the first step to defending them is attacking them, and then when you make it five-on-five,” Mazzulla said. “They just test your communication and discipline, and I thought tonight we handled that a lot better.”

So they have the Pacers figured out right now. That shouldn’t last long. They will respond, whether or not Tyrese Haliburton’s injuries impact his availability.

When Mazzulla walked into the locker room following the Game 2 win, he found a group sitting down, relaxing, basking in the win. But he didn’t let them take more than a moment to relax.

“The most important thing we should be thinking right now: What are they going to do to try to attack us?” Mazzulla said, via the Celtics’ X page. “What do we have to do, starting right now? Right now, we start thinking about how we can get better, how we stay in the right mindset.”

Unlike in prior series, the Celtics won Game 2 even more convincingly than the series opener. Trending upward to start a series is a novel concept. They can go on the road and blow them both, coming back tied 2-2, a situation they haven’t experienced this season.

The Pacers have shown they will keep shooting well and play at full speed. They were down 0-2 to the New York Knicks a series ago and outlasted them. Boston has the firepower to stay ahead, but the Celtics have to keep attacking to finish what they started.

(Photo of Jrue Holiday and Jaylen Brown: Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)