Nothing Like Securing A Winning Record On A West Coast Trip
Much like Sacramento, for whatever reason when the Celtics go to Phoenix to play the Suns, it’s rarely easy. This may confuse you because when you think of the Suns recently, your brain tells you they are a bad team. This is true, they are bad, and yet over the last 4 seasons every game the Celtics played in this building was decided by 6 points or less. Last night coming to town on the second night of a B2B, it wouldn’t have shocked me if this was one of the games they dropped on the trip. I think heading into it we all would agree that a 2-2 record would have been gravy. After losing last year on a buzzer beating game winning Tyler Ulis three (product of a weird Isaiah turnover) I’ll admit I was a bit on edge. Then the Celtics got out to their huge lead and I got even more on edge. But once the dust settled the Celts pulled out the win and secured a winning record on this Road trip. They’re now just 3.0 behind TOR with 2 H2H’s coming up. Suddenly they’ve won 4 in a row and they’ve done it guys in and out of the lineup. Granted almost any team looks a whole lot better after completing a SAC/PHX gauntlet, but stop raining on my parade. At a time when you need to start playing better basketball, the Celtics have responded to their little 1-3 stretch just a few weeks ago.
The Good
– With Devin Booker not playing, for me the matchup I most wanted to see was Jayson Tatum vs Josh Jackson. They’ll obviously be tied to each other for the rest of their careers given the Celtics history with Jackson and the fact they were draft right after one another. Tatum responded well to then challenge, finishing with 23/6 on 10-18 shooting
Tatum got off to a great start and never slowed down, and you can pick any spot on the floor in which Tatum excelled. Midrange? Yup. At the rim? Sure did. Long range iso twos? No problem. What I loved was once again Tatum was aggressive and looked for his shot. He led the team with 18 FGA and you could tell him and Jackson were really going at it. That’s the competitive fire I like to see from such a quiet guy.
Over his last 5 games Tatum is avergaing 18.8/7.0/2.0 with 56/46% splits. The Rookie Wall is officially a thing of the past and Tatum is starting having one of his best stretches of the entire season. I would say that’s pretty important given everything going on.
– I think you will agree that when the Celtics are shorthanded and playing these dogshit teams, guys like Al Horford have to play well and make a major impact that results in a win. Much like he did against SAC, Horford what all kinds of dominant in this game
19/9/7 is great, but you don’t get a parade for dominating Dragan Bender and Alex Len. This was the performance I expect Horford to have in a game like this, so it’s not as if I’m overly excited or will point to this game to show why he’s so valuable.
But I will say this. On a back to back, this was absolutely the performance the Celtics needed. If you watched this game, everything went through Horford. He led the team in assists and rebounds while shooting at a very efficient clip. I’m glad the Celtics went with this approach (running things through Al) to help take the pressure off everyone else. That’s what makes Horford so unique for this team. It’s pretty rare that you can have a guy be one of your best defenders and then also ask him to be your best facilitator, while also asking him to rebound and be a consistent offensive option. If you want to praise to guys who have played a major role in the success of this trip, Horford is most definitely one of those guys.
We all know he was struggling big time on the offensive end for what, like 3 weeks? Well over his last 5 games things have looked much better. His 11/5/5 with 44/50% splits over this time period, and most recent play against SAC/PHX is just the type of shit he needs to get back to playing well once the games get harder. I’ve talked about slump busters with this team before, and that’s hopefully what this trip has been. How he does against UTA will be a great test, because that frontcourt is no joke.
– If you know anything about this history of Marcus Morris’ career, you knew that there was no way he was going to sit out this game after resting against SAC with a bum right ankle. The long story short is they basically traded him without telling and all this other shady shit which now results in him basically hating their guts. Well, let’s see how he did
20 points on 6-8 shooting before getting hurt again, I’d say he was pretty good. Back to back 20 point games for the first time in his career was a nice tough as well. There’s really no arguing how good Morris has been amongst all these injuries. He’s somehow playing at a true #1 option level. The guy is hitting nothing but nylon for about a month now and it’s fucking crazy. Think of how far we’ve come, to wanting to gouge our eyes out when he took a contested midrange jumper, to basically being SHOCKED when he misses a shot. He led the bench with a +9, and from everything I saw his ankle isn’t going to be anything super serious so that’s good.
– 23 straight for Terry
16/7/3 to keep his double digit streak alive, Terry gave us a little bit of everything in this one. My favorite part of his night though was when he fake passed and made Troy Daniels rotate to cover Nader in the corner and then nailed the three. I don’t know where Terry developed that, but this is not the first time he’s sort of fake jab stepped into a three.
What I’ve noticed during this streak is Rozier hasn’t just been scoring consistently, but also has shown a new commitment to the defensive end. Last night he had a Drtg of 96.6 which was the fourth best on the team, and make no mistake, the success of this Celtics team is every bit reliant on how Terry defends in addition to his offense.
– Who led the team in +/-? Not Horford, not Tatum, not Terry or even Jaylen. It was Aron Baynes. You look at the box score and you see he finished with just 4/6/3 in his 18 minutes, but I’m not kidding you when I say he played really really well. He did work on both glasses, with a 18% OREB% and a 16.7% DREB%. He kept balls alive for second chance points, he played great defense with a team best 73.0 rating, and when he had opportunities to score, he didn’t miss a shot. I can’t stress this to you all enough. The key to the Celtics success remains defense and rebounding, and when they are getting THIS type of effort from Baynes in both of those areas, they are much harder to beat.
– 14-14 from the FT line. Have to love that
– Hard to not love that first quarter though right? Offense was humming with 8 assists on 12 baskets, displaying the best kind of porn you can find on the internet
They finished with 52/71% splits and nearly half their makes were from behind the arc. Sure it ended up kind of screwing them later, but for those 12 minutes it was nearly basketball perfection.
The Bad
– Not the best shooting nights for guys named Rozier (4-16), Jaylen (3-11), or Monroe (3-8). Rozier went back to the <39% life, while Monroe put up his second consecutive dud and Jaylen I’ll give a pass to considering it was his second game back. I say get this all out of your system now, because in a few weeks offensive performances like these will not be acceptable. I was especially shocked at Monroe, partly because I would have thought there would be a little revenge game in him, but also because he was getting dominated by Alex Len. Nothing Monroe tried offensively worked, and then on the other end his paper mache defense was a bit of a problem.
– Year 3 Jaylen needs to come back with a much better handle. Right now I’d say it’s the main weakness in his game. He’s still way too sloppy with the basketball off the dribble, and once he tightens that up he can really take that Year 3 Leap. I think now his brain and body are moving a little too quick for his handle. What I mean by that is he knows where he wants to go and tries to get there, but the whole doing it with the ball thing still gives him trouble. I’m not saying he needs to be Harden or Kyrie or anything, but it is one area that to me is a glaring issue.
– Look it’s never good when you blow a 20 point lead, it’s even worse when you do it against a team that has 19 wins. Even though it was predictable, we’ve seen this team do it a dozen times by now, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It’s why Brad got so mad, he knew what was happening just like you and I did. The Celtics got up early and said “Yup OK that’s it PHX is going to quit we don’t have to try”. Only newsflash, PHX has nothing to lose by winning this game and they tried. That caught the Celtics off guard and they hung around until the Celts finally woke up and punched back.
That mental lapse is not something I’m loving with the playoffs just a few weeks away. That’s the thing with playing a shit ton of young players, you never know what to expect mentally.
– Rough night too for our beloved Shane Larkin. Both ends stunk, he couldn’t make a shot (1-8) and couldn’t stop a nosebleed (112 Drtg). Tyler Ulis ate him up there’s really no other way to put it. It’s OK, still trust him with my life in a high pressure situation.
The Ugly
– You may want to start with the 2nd quarter, but I’m going to start with Yabu playing 18 seconds in this game. I am going to need someone to tell me what the fuck is going on. One day we have Brad saying Yabu is going to play a big role over the final stretch and the next he’s not even playing 30 seconds? This is insulting.
– But yeah, that 2nd quarter was the grossest display of basketball these eyes have ever seen. Nothing like 33/33% splits to kill all your momentum and the 17 points they scored looks like way more than it felt. It felt like the Celtics had 4 points in that quarter. The defense decided to disappear as PHX shot 55/57% and made 4 3PM. I would say it was this quarter that robbed us of Yabu minutes so you damn right I’m upset about that. Stop blowing these opportunities, they are already few and far between.
With one final stop in UTA tomorrow night, we’re done with the cakewalk teams. Celts go UTA/TOR/MIL/TOR in their next four games. You want to show you’re for real? Sweep both those TOR games and walk out of this stretch 3-1 or something. Win all of them and oh boy there is not enough Kool Aid on this planet. First order of business though, Tatum vs Mitchell: The Battle Of The Guys Who Should Be ROY But Won’t Be.
51 down. 3 to go.