The ball bounced off the front of the rim, Jayson Tatum leapt to grab the rebound, and Miami’s Caleb Martin crashed into him from behind.
Tatum landed on his back inside the paint but seemed unfazed by the impact. He picked himself up off the TD Garden floor right away.
Seeing Tatum take such a spill in the final minute of a game the Celtics led by double digits may have been unsettling, but Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla didn’t feel that way. He was eager to see how Tatum would respond.
“I was waiting to see what he was going to do,” Mazzulla said after the Celtics defeated the Heat, 114-94, in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series Sunday.