Celtics

After an embarrassing loss Thursday, the Celtics defeated a familiar face.

After getting rocked by the Bucks on Thursday, the Celtics made up the damage done to their net rating in one big win as they blew out the Rockets 145-113 in Ime Udoka’s first return to TD Garden.

Here are the takeaways.

1. The consensus across the board from players and coaches regarding Udoka, including Udoka himself, seemed to be “let’s move past it.”

Udoka — who was suspended from the team for having an inappropriate relationship with a female staffer prior to the start of the 2022-23 season — expressly said he and the players involved in the Celtics’ run to the 2022 NBA Finals have moved on.

“We had a good year, not great year. Didn’t get it done,” Udoka said when asked about walking into TD Garden prior to the game. “But yeah, I would say just seeing some people I haven’t seen in a while, I obviously talked to. Then once it’s done, it’s done. A first time for everything. We’ve been through it and are ready to move on.”

Celtics players, meanwhile, were relatively (and predictably) tight-lipped about Udoka. Tatum said he wanted to keep the conversations he has had with Udoka private. Payton Pritchard, who knew Udoka from growing up in Portland, greeted his former coach warmly after the game. He admitted facing Udoka was “a little bit” weird.

“But I mean, they’re competitors,” Pritchard added. “They’re a great coaching staff. He’s a great coach and we just, I don’t know. It’s just another game to us, and I think they felt the same way.”

Jaylen Brown, who torched Udoka’s Rockets, said he was happy for the chance to go up against Udoka and members of his staff who jumped ship to Houston.

“It’s always good to see those guys,” Brown said. “It’s not easy to get to the Finals. So with that group, there’s always going to be something there.”

For their part, Celtics fans’ reaction to Udoka was mixed.

Moving on is unquestionably best for all parties. Throughout last season, some factions of Celtics fans on social media pined for Udoka whenever the team would struggle, but with a little more time to prepare for a season, Mazzulla is proving more than capable of leading a team through its ups and downs. Celtics players seem to respond well to his brand of leadership, and this year’s team has been one of the best in the league. Udoka, meanwhile, has a new team and a new set of challenges as he tries to sneak a young team into the postseason.

Udoka’s indiscretion last year, whatever it was specifically, cost the Celtics an opportunity to try to finish what they started the year before. Celtics fans are well within their rights to boo him as a result when he returns to TD Garden (and frankly, the pining for him last season always seemed a little desperate, since he got them into their awkward situation in the first place). But the franchise has moved on, and with Mazzulla (and Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, etc.) at the helm, the Celtics appear to be in a phenomenal place as we near the halfway mark of the season.

Udoka’s right: Once it’s done, it’s done.

2. Brown got hot early and seemed to work himself into an admirable rhythm. After a turn-around jumper over Fred Van Vleet and a nifty step-back against Jalen Green, Brown went on a tear, shooting 11-for-13 for most of the game before two heat-check 3-pointers down the stretch trimmed his shooting percentage to a mere 73.3 percent (11-for-15) from the floor and 66.7 percent (4-for-6) from behind the arc. Brown finished with a hyper-efficient 32 points to go with six rebounds, two assists, two steals and two emphatic blocks.

“I still think I have a lot of potential that I haven’t tapped into, and I’m learning the game,” Brown said. “This is a beautiful game that we all get to watch and play and I’m having fun learning and trying to reach my full potential. On top of being a team guy, on top of making sure our guys are in the right spots and being a leader, it’s been fun trying to figure out how to be the best version of Jaylen Brown.”

3. Tatum got himself tossed in the third quarter after expressing frustrations with multiple no-calls. The one that finally drew his ire enough to earn an ejection was a transition block by Cam Whitmore, which appeared to catch a lot of Tatum’s arm.

On the one hand, Tatum probably could have done without tacking two technicals onto his season-long total (he’s up to six now). On the other, he probably wasn’t wrong, and the official who tossed him compounded a missed call by allowing a superstar to talk himself into an ejection. Also, Tatum knew the Celtics were in a good place.

“I mean, I’m a very self-aware person,” Tatum said. “I understand time and score, the game was pretty much over and I just had to stand up for myself. I said my piece, got ejected, and that was it.”

Before his self-imposed exit, Tatum scored 27 points on 9-for-17 shooting and went 4-for-7 from behind the arc.

4. So far this season, lineups with Payton Pritchard have outscored opponents by 8.4 points per 100 possessions if you filter out garbage time, per Cleaning the Glass.

Of course, Pritchard plays a pretty important role during garbage time: Keep the Celtics ahead by enough to glue the starters to the bench. He rightly holds a high opinion of those minutes, as he told reporters after the game.

“I don’t ever look at it like garbage time,” Pritchard said. “This is an opportunity for me to hoop. I’m not in there for the first or third quarter. So that is my time. So I don’t look at it like that. I mean, everybody’s NBA guys at the end of the day. So this is top-level basketball here.”

Pritchard is right, and playing against NBA guys on Saturday, he finished with 19 points (7-for-10 shooting) with four rebounds and three assists.

This was not one of the assists, because the NBA does not allow off-the-glass passes to count as assists, but it was still a pretty flashy play.

5. After shooting 3-for-14 from behind the arc in the last three games combined, Derrick White finished 3-for-5 on Saturday. If you were concerned about his shooting, rest assured.

6. Joe Mazzulla felt the Rockets won a number of margins the Celtics would have liked to win.

“I think it gives us space to know we can get better,” Mazzulla said. “… That’s a good win, but we’ve got to live in the space that we can get better.

“And it’s not that anything’s wrong. It doesn’t need to be a big deal. But if we can live in the space of ‘We’re good team, but it’s not good enough,’ I think that’s a healthy place to be, and I think that’s how we can grow.”

7. Ice Cube and 50 Cent sat courtside. Ice Cube will be honored by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame for founding the popular Big 3 league. The rapper will receive the inaugural Ice Cube Impact Award in Springfield on Monday.

8. The Celtics, who are now 19-0 at home this season, will travel to Toronto for a showdown against the Raptors on Monday at 7:30 p.m. After that, they put their perfect home record on the line against Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs on Wednesday, followed by a contest against the defending champion Nuggets on Friday.

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