Color commentator Brian Scalabrine called the Pistons’ recent play “low focus” before the game. The Pistons had lost 27 straight games going into Thursday night’s big matchup.

For their part, the Celtics were very focused. They had just come back from a great trip to the West Coast and had a 14-0 record at home. The odds for any game have never been so far off before.

There’s no way this could go wrong, right? Do you agree?

The Pistons were ready to go right away. Cade Cunningham scored eight points in a short amount of time, giving them an early 12–6 lead. In this car crash, train wreck, and extinction-level event, Cunningham has been the only bright spot. Head Coach Monty Williams wanted to test him early on.

In the first half, Cunningham really couldn’t be stopped. He smoked the Celtics all over the court and looked like he couldn’t be stopped going downhill. Because the Celtics have so many guard defenders and rim blockers, this shouldn’t have been a big deal.

Do you agree?

Because Jaylen Brown hurt his back and couldn’t play Thursday night, I thought Head Coach Joe Mazzulla would stick with the changes and start Sam Hauser in his place. But since they had to play back-to-back games against the Raptors on Friday, Al Horford slid in since he wasn’t going to play tomorrow anyway.

This made the group very big, with three players over 6’8″ and one guy 7’3″, which looked like it would be hard for the Pistons to play with Kevin Knox II starting at 4. It almost seems unfair to have Porzingis play down low on some post-up situations. Things should have been easy for the Celtics if they could win the three-point war, which the Pistons let everyone do.

Do you agree? Okay, guys? Okay, then. Guys.

The Pistons are 29th in the league in team three-point percentage, which means they are really bad at making threes. Early on, some really bad bricks showed this, with threes from Cunningham and Knox ringing off the rim at strange angles.

But the Celtics didn’t exactly get off to a great start either. They missed their first 9 shots from deep and were down 28–17 early on, which led to a timeout. I started to see myself losing badly because this was the worst trap game ever. I felt some butterflies in my stomach start to move around.

The Celtics will always shoot threes, no matter what I, you, or anyone else says. At the end of the first quarter, there were two more makes and better defenses and the score was only 30-27. Well, that was close. Let’s get back to our regularly planned program.

Look around the corner, right?

Then there was what I like to call “Payton Pritchard Time” in the second quarter.

The Celtics took their first lead when Neemias Queta missed a free throw. Pritchard grabbed the ball and made three points. Even though the Pistons came back with a couple of good plays, it was a big play. There was no way they were giving up and letting the Celtics beat them in the second quarter.

After the runaway layup pretend-to-back-off, Pritchard did the Isaiah Thomas, which is also known as the quick finish among the trees. It might have been just me smiling, but it made me think of my guy IT4.

And then Pritchard missed three three-point shots in a row when Jrue Holiday got the ball back. A very good shooter like Pritchard missing three shots in a row is pretty strange, so it was an interesting moment. That’s okay, though! There is a three-point variation. We hope that this won’t lead to anything too bad.—

(feels a change in the force)

Then came what I’ll call the “what are we even doing” stretch. The Celtics lost the ball at an amazing rate, and the Pistons started making shot after shot with Cunningham in charge of the whole thing. Before the Pistons’ 10-0 run, the Celtics were only 1 for 9 from three-point range. After that, they were 4 for 20, and the C’s fell behind 50–37.

Things got worse after that. It looked like the Celtics were about to suffer by far their worst loss of the season, but they did nothing to stop it. Their car seemed to be being pulled, and they did nothing but stand there. The Celtics were down 19 points at halftime and were down 66-47.

Not possible!

To start the second half, Brian Scalabrine did a weird act-out of someone giving CPR while saying they needed to “resuscitate the team” and get things going. I felt hopeless and wondered what cosmic forces had worked together to make this happen.

But sometime during halfway, Jaylen Brown, who was hurt, slammed the “SHIFT ENERGY” button, which is an emergency failsafe. The universe changed in a single direction, and in the third quarter, the Celtics started to erase a 19-point lead.

It looked like the first thing that needed to be done was to get Derrick White new shoes since the red ones he was wearing were making him slip and slide during the first half. So that was a win. He stole the ball right away and threw it to Al Horford for a dunk.

Boom.

Step two was hitting the weights. Tatum got so strong that he could throw one of the biggest guys in the NBA, Jalen Duren, out of the lane with a vicious move. The crowd loved it, and for a while, TD Garden felt like a party as the Celtics came back from being down one point. One!

Pow.

The third step was Jayson Tatum, which I guess builds on the second step. The Pistons’ guards couldn’t even come close to stopping him from going to the basket. He went downhill over and over again. He took the whole Pistons team hostage and locked them in the weight room, where he pushed them around like a bunch of bowling pins on his way to the basket.

Wham.

The third quarter was an amazing show of basketball power. The Pistons lost the ball in some cool ways, and Tatum just zipped past guys over and over. The 19-point loss turned into a tie by the end, with the score tied at 82 and the crowd doing real backflips.

Time for the fourth quarter. “Everyone survive while Tatum sits” was the plan for the first four and a half minutes, and it worked pretty well. When he checked back in at 93, the game was tied. The Pistons were not going to give up, though. The Pistons needed this game, and you can’t make the need happen. There was a chance for them to win against the best team in the league in the Garden. They hadn’t won since October.

Tatum didn’t show up much when he came back, probably because he was tired from getting the Celtics through the third. Don’t worry—Kristaps Porzingis started to find small men in the post and shoot over them with just half a step. It was pretty hard to stop. Porzingis even made an and-one, which gave the Celtics the lead.

In the second minute, with the team ahead by three points, Porzingis saw a clear three-point shot and made it! Wow, what a shot! This guy is great! Why is this okay?! How come the Celtics get to have this player?

Then Jaden Ivey came along and made an and-one and then a corner three to tie the game. The former fourth-round pick wasn’t letting this one go easily, but I didn’t know much about his game.

The controversial goalie call came next. Cunningham called a Jayson Tatum spin-layup a goaltend, which caused a lot of debate. I’m not sure what to think because the repeat review could have gone either way. The score is 108-106 with 8 seconds left.

It was a fadeaway three by Cade Cunningham, but it missed. Then Bogdonavic came out of nowhere! As time ran out, he made a putback that tied the game. Stop, Celtics.

White sends the ball in, and Tatum turns it around for the win. It’s off. Extra time.

This game is officially silly, and it makes you feel more different emotions than a badly written holiday romance comedy. Everything that happened was over one simple thing: getting hit on the glass. The Celtics weren’t boxing out nearly well enough, and near the end, they were losing every 50-50 rebound.

Even in overtime, that didn’t change. The Pistons were jumping around like flying fish, throwing everything off, and putting their lives at risk to make things happen. It was pretty amazing to see a team that wants to win so badly that they don’t care how dirty they are when they wake up.

But the Celtics have two big men of their own in White and Holiday. They made back-to-back and-ones to give the Celtics the lead again, 116–115. Holiday then fouled Ivey, who had been destroying the Celtics until that point.

Then there’s a steal and a straight-up three by White! BOOM! BOOM!! White is the best hoops player in the world! Super Star! MVP! Welcome to the Hall of Fame! Make a reservation!

If it wasn’t clear, all of my attempts to stay calm have been thrown out the window. The Celtics were 17 points ahead going into the game, which made my heart beat like it was Game Seven of the Finals and made me scream “WHITE” like crazy.

What looked like the easiest game ever on paper turned out to be the best game of the season. Which is what I’d expect from a Celtics team that loves to play with my emotions.