Celtics
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown scored 25 apiece in the win.
The Celtics needed some time to shake off rust, but they pulled away from the Cavaliers late on Tuesday for a 120-113 victory.
Here are the takeaways.
1. Getting a win on Tuesday was quietly important for a team that had already racked up a 15-5 record entering the contest. The Celtics have a brutal stretch ahead, with back-to-back home games against the Cavaliers and back-to-back home games against the Magic. That includes a three-game-in-four-nights stretch culminating with their contest against the Magic on Friday … before they return to the court less than 48 hours later on Sunday afternoon. After all of the rest the Celtics got over the last week (and with the Cavaliers bizarrely coming off a back-to-back in their own game against the Magic on Tuesday), the Celtics needed to set a good tone for a hard week.
Now they need to do it again (and again, and again). If they impress over the next few days, they have to do it again, but this time on the road as they travel out west.
The NBA schedule is unrelenting.
“Every team that loses kind of has a slight advantage of, for whatever reason, just playing a little bit harder,” Derrick White said. “So we can’t have that mindset of ‘we won, we’re going to win next time.’ We know [the Cavaliers are] going to come out aggressive, physical, and they have a really good team over there. So we’ve got to get ready for the challenge.”
2. Kristaps Porzingis shot just 0-for-6 overall in the first half and 0-for-2 from behind the arc with three turnovers. He bounced back nicely in the second half, however, pouring in 19 of his 21 points and working his way to the free-throw line nine times.
“I was terrible in the first half, and I knew I had to turn it on,” Porzingis said. “I was happy that the game was that close already. Those mismatches, [Jayson Tatum], [Jaylen Brown], all these guys just found me. I was able to get myself in the game, get some easy free throws, some easy looks, hit a couple threes, and just was aggressive but let the game come to me. I think that was a big contrast from first to second half.”
3. The Celtics started icy cold from the floor, missing their first nine 3-pointers before Payton Pritchard finally knocked one down late in the first quarter. The Cavaliers took a 18-4 lead in the early going, which was clearly surmountable (the Celtics re-took the lead in the second quarter briefly before falling behind by one again at halftime) but still an ugly look as they bricked triples and turned the ball over.
4. The only player who appeared to have anything going in the first quarter was Jaylen Brown, who scored 10 quick points running right past Max Strus at will. Brown finished the first half with 16 points and scored 25 overall.
Brown also recorded four assists for the second game in a row. In his postgame comments, Joe Mazzulla pushed back against recent criticism of Brown’s passing, calling assists “one of the most misleading stats of all time.”
“To me, it’s one of the most misleading things to say a guy didn’t get an assist,” Mazzulla said. “That doesn’t mean he didn’t pass, it doesn’t mean he didn’t make the right read. It just meant on his potential assist opportunities, those shots didn’t go in. I think that’s what’s important for our guys. What success looks like, Jaylen averaged like five-and-a-half potential assists in those two games.
“And in reality, we don’t need him to average more potential assists. We need him to score. We need to put him in position to where he can get out in transition and run, he can get those easy baskets, he can get inside the paint.”
Tatum added that Brown’s improvements as a passer are “absolutely” underrated.
“His growth as a playmaker has gotten better each and every season,” Tatum said.
5. The Celtics enjoyed a massive free-throw disparity and took full advantage of it, going 26-for-26 at the line. Since 1996 (and possibly longer, but that’s as far as the NBA’s stat site would allow us to sort), the Celtics have only made that many free throws without a miss once: Last season, when they went 26-for-26 against the Wizards on Nov. 22.
6. Donovan Mitchell picked up a technical in the second quarter in what has to be the most frustrating way for an NBA player to get one: Arguing vociferously against a call on which he was objectively correct. After the Celtics were awarded possession after a ball clearly bounced off Kristaps Porzingis’s foot and out of bounds, Mitchell leapt in the air and barked in protest, which earned him the technical. Cavaliers’ coach J.B. Bickerstaff argued the call as well, which was a little confusing since the Cavs opted not to challenge it.
7. After Tatum dropped 25 points with 10 rebounds and five assists, Mazzulla gave a thoughtful answer about why he and Brown matter so much, even when they have relatively muted stat lines.
“It’s the relation of how they make people better around them,” Mazzulla said. “It’s their defensive ability, like, they play hard most of the time, 90 percent of the time on defense, and they can dominate a game without shooting the ball. So with this world and all this noise about what a good player is, we have to be able to credit them when they’re playing team basketball. …
“These two have to navigate being All-Stars on a good team and that goes overlooked today because it’s like there’s two All-Stars and a bunch of role players. And we have four, five, six All-Stars and a really well-balanced team. And we can’t be who we (are) if those guys don’t have the humility to be who they are and at the same time make each other better.”
8. Importantly, the Celtics seem to be on board with the sacrifices. To that end: Five players scored double figures, while Sam Hauser pitched in nine. Al Horford scored just two points, but he and Hauser led the team in plus/minus with 13 and 14 respectively.
“I’m certain that none of us are averaging career-highs in points,” Tatum said. “They’re all taking a dip. But it’s for the better of the team, our success as a unit is more important, and we understand that. We know what the ultimate goal is.”
9. White had a relatively understated game with 17 points, four rebounds and four assists, but he buried three triples in a roughly 60 seconds in the second quarter as the Celtics rallied, and his triple with 2:32 remaining was effectively the dagger, as the Celtics took a 10-point lead over an exhausted Cavaliers team.
“We just continued to play the right way, making the right reads, staying in attack mode and just trust that we got a lot of good shooters, got a lot of good looks, and they’ll eventually fall,” White said. “So obviously you don’t want to start like that, but it’s encouraging that we can have a start like that and stick with it.”
10. White was asked why the Celtics are still undefeated (11-0) at TD Garden this season.
“We got the best fans in the league,” he said. “Pretty simple.”
White is an excellent player, but he clearly isn’t above a little pandering. Still, we suppose that’s as good an answer as any.
The Celtics and Cavaliers return to TD Garden on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
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