Boston — During Friday night’s game between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers, Jayson Tatum was ejected for the second time in his career. The contentious incident occurred in the last moments of the third quarter, and the All-Star player for the Celtics expressed dissatisfaction with his removal for his second technical foul after the game.
In a pool report, official Bill Kennedy described the dismissal as “following a loose ball foul that was called on Jayson, Jayson continued to complain and was asked multiple times to head to his bench.” “He was given a second technical foul for making overt gestures toward the officials and continuing to complain about the foul that was called on the floor.”
As the primary witnesses to Tatum’s dismissal in the last seconds of the quarter were assistants Charles Lee and Sam Cassell, Joe Mazzulla was not involved in the chaos.
Mazzulla remarked, “I don’t really know what led to his ejection.” “With barely a second remaining, I was attempting to determine our strategy for moving the ball and determining our starting lineup for the fourth quarter.” Thus, I only caught a little bit of that.
Mazzulla was protective of Tatum during the game and even complimented his star forward’s fire during the sequence, even though he did not witness the encounter up close.
Mazzulla said, “I actually like some of that.” Some of that, in my opinion, is crucial. It goes without saying that you don’t want it to come in the way of winning, but in my opinion, that kind of passion and concern is preferable than doing nothing at all. Pick and choose your areas occasionally, but I won’t confront him about it.
Without Tatum, the Celtics rallied for a 125-119 victory in the fourth quarter to complete the season unbeaten at TD Garden.
Mazzulla remarked, “I thought everybody stepped up.” And credit to them for that; that’s just the nature of our team. They performed admirably, in my opinion, on both ends of the floor. We went all out there and changed the way it looked, and I felt like the players just did what they had to do to prevail.
