BOSTON – For more games than he can recall, Terry Rozier waited for his opportunity.
This was, after all, supposed to have been his breakout season.
But there’s just one problem.
It turned out to be a breakout season for basically every guard ahead of him – Isaiah Thomas, Avery Bradley and Marcus Smart – which meant his minutes would once again be up and down.
His minutes may have fluctuated, but Rozier’s confidence in his game remained strong as ever.
And as the Boston Celtics gear up for Games 3 and 4 in the Nation’s capital, Rozier has indeed put his imprint on this series and is one of the reasons why Boston currently has a 2-0 lead in this best-of-seven series with Washington.
Rozier is averaging 8.0 points in this series, but none any bigger than the 3-pointer he hit with 98 seconds to play in the fourth quarter that tied the game at 110.
“I.T. (Isaiah Thomas), being who he is, in attack mode all the time, he jumped in the air and I was actually about to go in and crash (the boards),” said Rozier who had 12 points and an insane plus/minus of +25 which was tops among all players. “He found a way to pass the ball out to me, I kind of bobbled it. Just got it off and it went in. It was an exciting play.”
In a game that Washington had control of for most of the night, Rozier’s late-game 3-pointer provided a much-needed infusion of life into a Celtics team that for the most part seemed they were one or two plays from being put away for good.
Boston’s Isaiah Thomas, who scored a career playoff-high 53 points, took over in the fourth quarter and in overtime by scoring 29 points (20 in the fourth, nine in overtime) in leading the Celtics to their sixth straight playoff victory.
Thomas’ scoring was huge, as was the continued fight and scrap shown by the Celtics who were carried by several high-energy plays late in the game like Rozier’s game-tying 3-pointer.
It was last year in the playoffs when Rozier went from a seldom-used rookie to a semi-regular rotation player off the Celtics’ bench during their six-game playoff series with the Atlanta Hawks.
Even when the minutes weren’t there, confidence was never something Rozier lacked.
An opportunity to play?
That’s another story.
“This is the best time of year for basketball,” Rozier said. “I just enjoy being in this moment.”
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens acknowledges that Rozier had a bit of a rocky second season.
“He’s a young player, so he’s going to have ups and downs,” Stevens said. “And sometimes we don’t look at ups and downs as a good thing, but they are. It’s good to have ups and downs; it’s good to have to go through some tough times just as well as the good times. One thing that I’ve always known about Terry from the minute I met him was he was extremely athletic and he was going to compete. And that’s never waned, even when he didn’t shoot it well for a while there, even when he was learning some of the stuff about how to run a team, and how to be a better defender, he’s always been that. And so that’s a great building block to start with.”
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