My Top 5 Celtics Plays From The Last Week

It’s Monday which means it’s time to look back at some of the best plays from our beloved Boston Celtics over the past week. While this blog was easy to write last week becasue the Celts only played like 2 games in 50 days, this week was much more difficult as we had 4 games to choose from. As a reminder these cover the games from 12/10-12-15 which was NO/WSH/ATL/DET. A 3-1 record over that span the Celts are playing some of their best basketball right now and in turn have blessed us with a ton of worthy candidates for today’s countdown. It wasn’t an easy decision to cut things down to 5, so if I don’t mention your favorite play let me know about it in the comments or on Twitter or something. As it stands today, this is my ranking

5. Great ball movement

One of the main reasons the Celts were able to win 8 in a row and close the gap between them and the MIL/PHI/INDs of the world is because their ball movement was so much better. This is a prime example of that unselfish play, and even though it comes against the Hawks this is more of a Celtics thing than a Hawks issue. You see a handful of situations where a Celtic player could have taken what would have been a good shot, but instead they kept it moving in an effort to achieve a great shot. Passing like this is contagious and it’s one of the best parts of their entire last two weeks in my opinion. When the ball moves like this, the Basketball Gods reward you and we saw it a handful of times this week. This just happened to be my favorite one.

4. Robert Williams not respecting his elders

Big week for Timelord no doubt about it. Thrown into action with guys being hurt, nobody took more advantage of their opportunity this week than Robert Williams. This block on Vince Carter was especially mean, not only because he blocked it with authority, but also because at this point you’d think guys are down to let Vince score whenever he has the ball out of respect. I mean this was a blowout, why not Vince get his? Not on Timelord’s watch. He had 5 blocks in this game but this was by far my favorite. Just so you know he’s averaging 8.3 blocks per 100 possessions, 6.2 blocks per 36, and he has a BLK% of 15.4%. A reminder he’s like the 4th big on this depth chart.

3. Jayson Tatum taking some ankles

I loved a couple things about this play. First, loved that Tatum got someone off the dribble as there are still people out there that think he’s just a spot up shooter. Now to be fair Tomas Satoransky isn’t making an All NBA Defensive team any time soon but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t a great move. The second part of this play that I loved was the fact that Tatum didn’t stop and take a pullup jumper. We’ve seen that before he makes a move gets a bit of space and takes the jumper rather than going all the way to the rim. Here you can tell he’s thinking dunk the whole way and takes it strong all the way to the finish.

2. Robert Williams becomes Anthony Davis’ Dad

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He actually ended up getting him twice in this game, but the first one was by far the better of the two. I think all of us who saw this play unfold got ready for a lowlight given the fact that AD is what, one of the top 5 best players in the league going up against an unproven rookie who has never guarded a player of his caliber in his life. Instead, Robert Williams gave Celtics fans everywhere a gigantic erection (or lady boner!) with the perfectly timed block. Even Davis said after the game that he was surprised Williams got that shot, and little did we know it was a preview of what was on the horizon in a week where Williams totaled 11 blocks.

1. Kyrie’s OT Fuck You Three

Clear cut winner in my opinion. Coming off hitting a ridiculous three right before this, in a battle of the two point guards who were equally unstoppable, you have to love the gigantic balls it took for Kyrie to take this shot. Think how what might have happened had this not gone in. He’s not giving WSH who was getting to the rim at will the ball in a tied game with plenty of time left. This is one of those moments where you just trust Kyrie and live with whatever decision he makes given how awesome he was in the OT scoring 12 of their 17 points, and if that means pulling up from 30+ feet to call game then so be it. It’s why the next time he’s in this situation if he takes the same shot and misses it, I won’t have a problem with it because he’s earned the right to take whatever end of game shot he wants.

Honorable Mention: Kyrie’s sideline three, Kyrie’s one legged step back against ATL, Tatum’s 4 point play, everything Smart did

So that’s where I netted out. This week we will have three games to choose from with PHX/MIL/CHA on the schedule as the Celts begin a nice 4 game homestand starting Wednesday. It wouldn’t shock me if Horford still sits, so something tells me we’ll be watching more Robert Williams next Monday.