Check out NBA.com’s lead tracker of the Boston Celtics’ 107-105 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves.

What do you notice?

The title of this might give it away, but if you point to the inverted peaks and valleys, you’ll have the right idea.

Boston’s second half consisted of building leads and then fending off the Timberwolves’ inevitable responses. Sure, you can complain that they kept allowing the visitors to get back in, but that’s basketball. After all, it is a game of running.

The real test is how a team will respond when things don’t go their way anymore, and the C’s did a great job of that on Sunday.

Minnesota would work to cut the difference to one or two possessions, just to look at the scoreboard and see they were trailing by double digits.

Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla credited his team’s poise and physicality as attributes that allowed them to bend without breaking against one of last season’s Western Conference finalists.

“Yes, you just have to have the balance and the physicality. I mean, they test you every possession on both ends of the floor with their physicality, their rim protection and their ball pressure,” Mazzulla said after his team led by as many as 19 points. “And then they have dynamic guys who can score at any time. So they go through runs. It’s just a matter of how you deal with it, and I thought our guys handled it well with the physicality on offense and our connectivity and balance on defense.”

We got a good look at the “bend don’t break” Celtics early in the third quarter. They had just watched the Wolves go on a 9-0 run to end the first half and cut their halftime lead to three points. Luckily, they came out of the gate with fire on the defensive side. By the time Minnesota scored their first field goal of the half, Boston had already blocked three shots and pushed the lead to 15 points. The two teams went back and forth for the rest of the quarter, but the lead was 11 heading into the fourth.

The Timberwolves pushed again. They managed to reduce the deficit to five after the first minute and a half of the final frame. This is where Boston’s physicality came into play. They started working the ball inside, targeting guard Nickiel Alexander-Walker into the paint, possession after possession. Both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown used their strength and size to keep Alexander-Walker down and get easy looks to push the lead back to two possessions.

“I say it all the time: ‘How do we respond? How can we resist what they’re trying to do?’” Tatum said. “It’s always a collective effort on both ends of the floor and guys finding ways to play on both ends.”

Both goals were essential to Boston’s “final act” of this victory.

Minnesota’s final point was cushioned by a pair of huge threes from Brown and Derrick White and a well-connected defensive stand by Boston on its final possession.

Look at these rotations.

Both Tatum and Jrue Holiday did a great job shutting down three-point shooters, preventing Minnesota from even getting a shot (Naz Reid’s attempt was ruled late).

Of course, it wasn’t a perfect win. There were mistakes all night that led to the Timberwolves getting back into this game again and again, but the Celtics didn’t let anything get out of hand. Every time things got tense, they responded like champions.