“At the end of the day, there’s no shot he shoots that we think is a bad shot, and so I think it was great even when he was 1/7 the team was still looking to find him. I thought he was great in that third quarter. He’s a straight shooter. He understands work ethic. He does the same process everyday, whether he does this or whether he goes 1/7,” Joe Mazzulla said of Sam Hauser after the Celtics 114-108 win over the Utah Jazz.
Hauser scored a career high 33 points on Monday night. He is the 4th Celtic to score his career high over the last week, joining Payton Pritchard, Derrick White and Baylor Scheierman.
It was his seven third quarter threes that really defined the night for Hauser. After going 1/6 from beyond the arc in the first half, Hauser heated up in the 3rd quarter, scoring 23 points while going 7/10 from three in the period and outscoring the Jazz.
Former Celtics assistant coach and current Jazz head coach Will Hardy talked about how Hauser has developed over his time in Boston.
“There were some moments off the ball where we just didn’t do a good enough job being physical with Sam. Sam’s developed a ton over the course of his career and he’s not just a catch and shoot shooter the way it signals in your brain. He doesn’t stand still, he moves, he cuts… he’s done a really good job of learning how to manufacture those catch and shoots and he deserves the credit for that.”
After the game, Hauser talked about how he is trying to become better at not getting too down after missing an open three.
“I gotta be better at that. Sometimes when you miss open ones you think you should make, you just get mad and frustrated real easy so I’ve been working on it this year… sometimes you just need to let it out.”
Not getting too hung up on one missed shot is important because that can tailspin into a player no longer taking those open shots. Hauser’s three-point shooting remains imperative to the Celtics title chances so they will need him to keep taking those shots with confidence so he can knock them down.
