Any Time Of Day It Doesn't Matter, The Celtics Keep Winning
First NBA team to 20 wins isn’t the Golden State Warriors, it’s not the Houston Rockets, Toronto Raptors, or Cleveland Cavaliers, it’s the Boston Celtics. Now you don’t get an award for it, and it doesn’t mean jack shit come April, but it’s still pretty cool when you consider what this team has gone through, and the players in which they’ve done it with. I’m not going to overreact all that much about beating the damn Suns, but I will say we’ve seen Celtics teams of the past get a weird start time and not be ready.
That was not the case yesterday.
The Good
– As is becoming tradition, we begin with Kyrie Irving. His 19 points led all Celtics, and he was once again efficient going 8-14 (2-3) from the floor. You would think playing a team like PHX, that Kyrie would have cooked for something like 30+, but this was another one of those games where he didn’t really force things, and just took what the game gave him
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Really the thing I care about most, and you should care about most, was when things were looking like a classic Celtics collapse, Kyrie came back in with 4:36 left and scored 5 quick points, essentially sealing the win.
I know it’s still relatively early in the season, but Kyrie is essentially becoming the player we saw last year. His points are down by 2 a game, but he’s playing 4 fewer minutes and taking nearly 2 fewer shots a night. I don’t think we’ll see him live in the 26+ range, but I don’t think he has to for this team to be successful. That’s the beauty of having upgraded talent around him. His 3P% went from 34% in October to 38% in November, and it’s only a matter of time before he breaks the 40% plateau.
– One of the silver linings of this Hayward injury is we’ve learned something pretty valuable about Jayson Tatum. He is becoming a legit 4th quarter clutch player. You know how I mentioned Kyrie coming back with 4 minutes left and helped seal the win? You know who else did that? Jayson Tatum. He had 6 points during that stretch and didn’t miss a shot. He finished with 15/8 and took only 8 shots. EIGHT!
As awesome as Kyrie has been in the clutch, something NONE of us debate, just look at how Tatum stacks up and try to tell me you don’t have a rush of blood flowing to your naughty parts. It’s ok this is a safe space.
I remind you, Tatum is 19 years old. I can only imagine when this offense allows him to take 13+ shots a night if he’s already this good and this efficient this early. Ben Simmons is most likely going to win ROY given his stats and role, but Jayson Tatum has been every bit impressive for a team that finds itself with the best record in the NBA.
– It’s hard to deny that Jaylen was clearly fighting through some struggles leading into this game. Well, like most NBA players who are struggling, he just needed to play the Suns and suddenly he looked right back on track
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Love the extra ball movement to Jaylen in the corners, did you know he’s shooting 42.9% from the left corner and 44.4% from the right? Both above league average. So far this season Jaylen’s usage is slightly up from 18.1 to 21.1%, but his TO% is down, and things like his true shooting, FT attempt rate, and 3P attempt rate are all up. The one thing I didn’t really like was only 2 of his FGA came in the paint. More on Jaylen in a second.
– The debate is over. If you would prefer to have someone like Okafor play over Daniel Theis, or even take away minutes from Daniel Theis, shame on you. SHAME ON YOU!! Not only did Theis have the second lowest Drtg of any big last night, but he also showed out on the offensive end going 3-5 in his 9 minutes. He was 3rd in therms of REB%, and second in terms of usage rate. Basically, when he was on the floor for those 9 minutes, he did EVERYTHING on both ends. Love Daniel Theis, need more of him, certainly not less.
– Ho hum, just 14/5/11 for Horford setting a new career high in assists. Oh and he had just 1 TO and went 6-10 (2-4) from the field. I guess that’s pretty good
And you know how those of us in the Pro Horford camp always talk about how it’s not just the scoring, or the passing, but the little things that make him so valuable? Well, the ending of the game was a direct example of that. The mere threat of having Horford on the floor, and forcing Chandler to make a decision, is what opened up the driving lanes for Tatum/Irving to make huge clutch plays at the basket. First of Tatum’s dunk, and then Kyrie’s layup to seal it. That is why Horford is so important to this offense. He makes it possible for others to do their incredible things, because teams need to worry about him. If you can’t see that at THIS point, you’re just blindly ignoring it.
– I thought this was one of Smart’s better all around performances. 13/4/7 with 0 TOs and he shot 50% from the field. This is the sort of Marcus Smart that I know and love, because he played the right way. He was making extra passes left and right just like at the end of the third that led to Semi’s three, and when he is doing stuff like that, not turning it over, and has decent shot selection, he’s a completely different player. There’s a reason he was a bench high +10
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– Who doesn’t love a little revenge game? It was clear from the start that Marcus Morris was going to be super aggressive, and the fact that he finished tied with Kyrie for the lead in FGA wasn’t all that surprising. He finished with 17/8, so while it may have not been efficient, it was certainly needed offensive production
I know he probably hates it, but he’s too good for this team on the second unit to mess with things right now. They need that scoring so bad, until they figure out where else to get it from, Morris has to be the guy. He still played 27 minutes, so I’m going to need him to take one for the team here.
– I don’t care who the Celtics are playing, they turn it over under 10 times, you are getting two gigantic thumbs up from me. Outside of Kyrie had had 3, not one player on the roster had more than 1.
– Don’t look now, but it would appear the offense is turning a corner. Another game over 50%, in fact the Celts shot 52/45% for the game and made 14 3s. We knew the offense wouldn’t be bottom of the league bad forever, and while it’s coming at the expense of the defense lately, it’s still nice to see this team hit a goddamn jump shot every once in a while.
– Semi breakout game? Perhaps.
The Bad
– Call me crazy, but between Jaylen/Smart/Rozier whoever, I would think they would be able to contain Devin Booker just a little bit, and we learned that simply was not the case. Something about this building possesses him, because he was unstoppable. 16-29 for 38 points, he hadn’t scored that many at any point during this season. Those FGA were the highest of the year as well.
– Does it seem weird to anyone else that Jaylen had the type of first half that clearly showed he was feeling it, and then in the second half he had 1 point and 1 FGA? That doesn’t sound right. He did play with some foul trouble sure, but even still, he was essentially a non factor after carrying this team offensively in the first half. I would have liked to see them run some easy stuff for him at the rim, especially in the fourth, but it never happened.
– It was the least surprising thing of all time that the Celtics blew a 17 point lead and needed to bring back the starters to close this one out. We’re seeing that it doesn’t matter who is on this roster, the Celtics just refuse to keep double digit leads. Once they got up early, they should have blown this team out, but that’s not how the Celtics work. They have to make you sweat EVERYTHING, even stupid afternoon games against the Suns.
– Look they’re winning games, and that covers a lot of issues, but you’re lying to yourself if you think what we are seeing lately is the same caliber of defense the Celts started the year off with. They are letting teams shoot too good, and score too many points for my liking. I think the defense was so crazy to start the year that many fans think that’s just how it’s always going to be, but that’s not the case. Kyrie has taken a step back, same with Jaylen and Al. It’s still good don’t get me wrong, but if this is the type of defense they play against the better teams in the league, they are going to lose more often than not.
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The Ugly
– Remember when the Celtics didn’t rebound like it was 2016? That was fun. This game was a performance straight out of that playbook as the Celts got absolutely murdered on the glass. A 47-31 final has to be the largest margin of the year, and they have up 16 offensive rebounds that led to 19 second chance points. Basically everything that had helped the Celtics get off to such a good start, was nowhere to be found in this game. They couldn’t defend, they couldn’t grab a defensive rebound, and they gave up a shit ton of second chance points. That is a recipe for disaster, and thankfully it came against PHX.
– Blowing this giant lead cost us Yabu, and this will always bother me. You need to get it to the point where you unleash this LEGEND
Stop dicking around and give the people what they want.
Now unlike some of their Eastern Conference competitors who have an easy as fuck December (cough cough TOR cough), the Celtics turn the page to MIL on Monday, and then dates on the road against SA/DET to start off the month. CLE, TOR, DET are all right there, so while the Celtics still have a nice lead in the #1 spot, that can change very quickly. I think it goes without saying they need to play much better than what we saw yesterday, and thankfully we have Brad who I’m sure will have them ready. In the meantime, say it with me
20 down, 34 to go.