POST GAME CHARLOTTE - HOME - CHA 94, BOS 126 Final

Celtics Wrap: Stellar Third Quarter Leads To Dominant Win Over Hornets

NESN by Logan Mullen on Wed, Jan 30, 2019 at 9:34PM

BOSTON — The Boston Celtics weren’t fazed by not having Kyrie Irving for the second game in a row.

With the star point guard sidelined due to a left hip strain, numerous Celtics stepped up as they dispatched the Charlotte Hornets 126-94 at TD Garden.

The first half was a mostly even affair, but a 35-point third period by the Celtics in which they outscored the Hornets by 19 allowed them to take control and put the game out of reach.

Jaylen Brown led the Celtics with 24 points, adding 10 rebounds. Terry Rozier also had a double-double, posting 17 points with 10 assists and five rebounds. Jayson Tatum dropped 20 points with five rebounds, while Marcus Morris had 15 with seven boards. Al Horford also had seven boards in addition to his 14 points. Gordon Hayward was the sixth Celtic in double figures, contributing 12 points with five boards.

Kemba Walker had 21 points and was one of four Hornets in double figures.

With the win, the Celtics climb to 32-19, while the Hornets fall to 24-26 with the loss.

Here’s how it all went down.

STARTING FIVE
PG: Terry Rozier
SG: Marcus Smart
SF: Jayson Tatum
PF: Marcus Morris Sr.
C: Al Horford

TATUM GETS GOING
The opening quarter mostly was even during the first few minutes, but the Celtics created a little bit of separation in the back half to finish the frame up 35-28.

It was slow-going offensively for both sides over the first 3:20, with the two teams shooting a combined 5-for-16 from the field. After a Celtics full timeout at 5:45, Tatum began to heat up, scoring six points in an 8-2 run over the next 1:45 to put the Celtics ahead by six.

The Celtics kept their lead hovered between six and eight points the remainder of the period. Despite the slow start on the offensive end, the Celtics finished the stanza shooting 62.5 percent from the field while not committing a single turnover.

Tatum led all players with 13 points in the first.

HORNETS CHIP AWAY
Although the Celtics were outscored 31-28 in the second quarter, they went into the half ahead 63-59.

The Celtics managed to open up their lead to as many as 11, but an 11-0 run by the Hornets over 2:01 allowed them to tie the game with two minutes left in the half. The two teams traded punches in the final couple minutes of the half, with Rozier capping the first 24 minutes off by draining a step-back trey with two seconds left to up Boston’s lead to four entering the break.

Brown and Malik Monk each had 10 points in the second quarter. Tatum and Brown shared the game-high in first-half points with 15.

C’S GO NUTS
After a mostly narrow first half, the C’s started deluging points on the Hornets in the third quarter, outscoring them 35-16 in the frame to take a 98-75 lead into the fourth.

With their advantage sitting at six at the midway point of the third, the Celtics started created some breathing room by dropping 11 unanswered points to bring their lead up to a comfortable 17 with 2:52 remaining.

All told, the Celtics outscored the Hornets 20-3 in the final 5:55 of the quarter, throwing down numerous highlight-reel dunks down in the process, with this Rozier-to-Tatum alley-oop sending the Garden into a frenzy.

Rozier dropped 10 points in the third quarter. Walker and Brown paced all players with 21 points apiece through 36 minutes.

BOSTON CRUISES TO FINISH
After a pretty demoralizing third quarter, it was clear the Hornets didn’t have much fight left in them. The Celtics outscored the visitors 28-19 to put the game to bed.

PLAY OF THE GAME
Tatum wasn’t the only one throwing down lobs from Rozier.

UP NEXT
The Celtics will head to New York for a tilt with the Knicks on Friday. Tip-off from Madison Square Garden is set for 7:30 p.m. ET.

112288

Team is coming into form.

Solid win. Complete team effort across the board.

Not that's Celtics ball! Great defense and aggressive offense. Beautiful ball movement. That's the way they played last year.
I know it's only one game, but I can't help thinking - Baron who? Kyrie who? Do we really want to break up this team, just when the young'uns are coming into their own?  

Berlin-T

Odd how well this team can play without Kyrie...???

cowens/oldschool wrote:Odd how well this team can play without Kyrie...???

reminds of the old Rondo days when he would miss time and the team would seem to play better.

more missed time to Irving does bother me. His history says he'll play about 63 games a year. one could argue $35M is a lot to pay a guy who will sit out 25% of a season.

Finally! An all-around great evening! Hayward puts in a decent game as well. Very quietly but solid game from him.

Also and more importantly, IND inches one game away in the loss column from us and we didn't give it back vs. CHA. Tied with PHI number there. Added to tonight more than likely loss for PHI at GSW and IND at ORL, all three of us will be tied in the loss column after tonight...not counting chickens!

I know I should be shot for saying this but I can't stop watching the train wreck that is IND. I really like Oladipo but that's what you get when you put all your eggs in one basket and that player goes down...PHI may be next if they keep playing Embiid when he's injured. They know they can't sit him because they will tank like IND is.

All those on the 2nd-3rd Place Bandwagon?!! I say, Come On, Man!!

db

kdp59 wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Odd how well this team can play without Kyrie...???

reminds of the old Rondo days when he would miss time and the team would seem to play better.

more missed time to Irving does bother me. His history says he'll play about 63 games a year. one could argue $35M is a lot to pay a guy who will sit out 25% of a season.

New trend, lots of franchise guys, Kawhi, Butler taking time off to stay healthy, maybe we should have done that  with Bird and McHale....

kdp59 wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Odd how well this team can play without Kyrie...???

reminds of the old Rondo days when he would miss time and the team would seem to play better.

more missed time to Irving does bother me. His history says he'll play about 63 games a year. one could argue $35M is a lot to pay a guy who will sit out 25% of a season.

That doesn’t bother me that much as long as he’s there for the playoffs. That they seem to perform better without him bothers me more. Seems like teammates are more involved.

KyleCleric wrote:

kdp59 wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Odd how well this team can play without Kyrie...???

reminds of the old Rondo days when he would miss time and the team would seem to play better.

more missed time to Irving does bother me. His history says he'll play about 63 games a year. one could argue $35M is a lot to pay a guy who will sit out 25% of a season.

That doesn’t bother me that much as long as he’s there for the playoffs. That they seem to perform better without him bothers me more. Seems like teammates are more involved.

I know, thought of this too, but many factors why, haven’t pinned down exactly why, at this point even if Kyrie leaves I don’t care...lol. 2 J’s seem to play really well when they both share first scoring option duties and they have loads of athleticism/talent, for 20 and 22 gotta love their skill level, which is only going to grow too.

cowens/oldschool wrote:

KyleCleric wrote:

kdp59 wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Odd how well this team can play without Kyrie...???

reminds of the old Rondo days when he would miss time and the team would seem to play better.

more missed time to Irving does bother me. His history says he'll play about 63 games a year. one could argue $35M is a lot to pay a guy who will sit out 25% of a season.

That doesn’t bother me that much as long as he’s there for the playoffs. That they seem to perform better without him bothers me more. Seems like teammates are more involved.

I know, thought of this too, but many factors why, haven’t pinned down exactly why, at this point even if Kyrie leaves I don’t care...lol. 2 J’s seem to play really well when they both share first scoring option duties and they have loads of athleticism/talent, for 20 and 22 gotta love their skill level, which is only going to grow too.

I’m hopeful Kyrie and Stevens figure it out. The ceiling with him is so high. They got to the ECF with Rozier and Smart.

I’m gonna wait to see how we do in this years playoff run before making any definite conclusion....

So will Danny.

There was some beautiful Celtic ball played last night.  A LOT clicked.  34 assists on 50fgm is a lot of assists and a lot of fgm.  Our 35-16 3rd quarter turned the 2nd half into extended garbage time.  A 35 point 2nd half by the Hornets.

Jaylen Brown's hand must be healing up because he has been playing exceptionally well the last few weeks.  His shooting is getting good.  If we have to give up one of the J's for Davis, at this point, I'm not sure which one I'd want to give up.  Tatum is streaky and disappears for lengths and, unlike Jaylen, doesn't have an injury to blame it on.  Not down on Jayson, but my faith in Brown is being somewhat restored.  24 points on 10-18.  He was 2-8 from 3, which was his glaring weakness last night, his poor shot discipline, but if you look at it from another way he was 8-10 from 2 and that is phenomenal!  That's "you can't stop me!" numbers.  He also had 10 rebounds.  Best game in a while for Jaylen Brown and his games have been steadily getting better over the past week or two.

Tatum had a very good game too after, what seems to me, a general season long slump.  He isn't the same force this year that he was last.  Is that because he's getting scouted now, or is it the "Kobe-Yucky Effect"?  20 points on 9-15.  Between the two J's we got 44 points on 19-33 (57.6%).  In a wing-oriented league, that's devastating.

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
1 hour ago
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 44 more points than Anthony Davis last night.

Last night's game should send a message to the GM in Nwalins why they should wait until summer time before making any decisions about Anthony Davis.

Theis with 7 rebounds and 2 blocks in 15 minutes and bee-U-tiful block and then pass up for a streaking Hayward who passed it to Semi for the finish at the rim.  I never thought I'd feel such a feeling of peace, satisfaction and that the world was going right just by seeing a player run a fast break to the iron and not to the corner.

I've been isolating my focus on Brad Wanamaker a lot, especially on defense.  Offensively, he's a solid player.  He doesn't force shots, doesn't try to do things he can't do, he moves the ball around and hits his shots.  Solid, albeit not eye-popping, but if he's going to make it in the NBA he has to play defense and so that's what I've been watching.  He's a solid defender.  Once again, he isn't an obvious defensive force like Jaylen or TRo can be, but he moves his feet to stay in front of his defender and he's never so far off his man he cannot get to him to contest a shot.  If I'm right, he makes Rozier expendable.

Hayward with a solid game too.  I would take this game from him for the rest of the season and feel good about it.  12 points on an efficient 5-10, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and he seemed to be in the right places at the right times.  Not an OG game, to be sure, but SG (Solid Gordon) game.  The question we may have to wait until next year to get answered is "is the Old Gordon ever coming back?".  For right now, I'll take SG.  I've been down on him, I believe fairly, but I'll also give him credit when he earns it and he earned some last night by delivering an SG game.  Some info on Hayward that might be flying under the radar is that he is averaging more rebounds/minute than any other time in his career (not including the 5 minutes he played last year); he is averaging the 2nd most assists/minute in his career, the most since '13-'14; his assist-to-turnover ratio is better than it was in his All-Star year of 2017; he is tied with his rookie year for most offensive rebounds/minute; he is just .1 steals/minute behind his career-high season of '14-'15; his offrtg/defrtg differential is +2.  My point here is this:  his shooting is off, we all know it and so does he (painfully!) but he's doing well in other aspects of the game.  He's rebounding well, he's assisting well, he's not turning the ball over, he's being a good ball hawk and he's not a drag on the team by costing the team more on defense than he's giving them on offense when he's on the floor.  If we're going to dump on him for his shooting, as we should, we should also see the bigger picture too.

Only 31 fouls called all game, both sides, and it seems like there was a flurry of whistles in the 4th quarter after the game was long, long over.  When the game was competitive the refs really let the boys play.  Loved it.  About as close to '80s hoop as we'll see nowadays and, you know what?, it was very enjoyable game to watch (Adam Silver:  if you're reading this post consider this a hint).

Malik Monk is a completely conscienceless gunner.  Brad also saw him as a defensive liability because he had us go to whomever Monk was guarding every time down the court.  Offensively, Monk has no edit button.

We defended the extremely dangerous Kemba Walker well.  Smarty with a great defensive play on a break.  Not only did he prevent the drive but he stripped Walker and passed it before he went out of bounds.  

Let's face it, a team that has Jeremy Lamb and BisMACK BiiiYOMMMMBOOOOO!!!!! as starters is not a good team.  For them to be in the #8 playoff spot is a indictment of the EC.  Nicolas Batum, however, is a crafty player.  He plays a little like what Hayward is playing like now.  He's not that athletic anymore but he seems to get to where he wants to go.  Hopefully Hayward's athletic decline is just the to-be-expected extended recovery period players with injuries like that need before they are back (see George, Paul).  A nice crafty move by Hayward at about 2:10 of the game highlight video below.

Thanks to last night's blowout, brought to us by our good friends in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Boston Celtics now have the 3rd biggest MOV in the NBA, +6.8ppg.  Only Milwaukee (+9.7) and GSW (7.3).  In other good news we are now 13th in total rebounds/game.  Not great, sorta middle of the pack, but better than we were.  6th in assists/game.  10th in fgm, so we're scoring the ball.  6th in 3pt fg% and 3rd in 3pt fgas.  4th lowest in Turnovers/game.  4th in steals/game.  So, overall, we're doing quite well.  I especially like the MOV stat which, as we go further and further through the season and we've played a lot of games against a lot of different opponents, becomes more and more reliable.  Where we are not doing quite well, as we all know, is in ftas/game.  We are 29 out of 30.  I wish Brad took that stat more seriously.  I know, I know, he says that he wants good, open shots and good, open shots don't usually result in the contact that create the whistle, HOWEVER, those are easy points and I'm a big fan of easy.  Especially The Big Easy (shout out to the Pelicans' GM.  We love you.  Remember that)  

The Pacers are in Orlando on the 2nd game of a b2b and are on a 3 game losing streak after losing Oladipo.  The Sixers are in GSW tonight.  If both of those teams lose and we win in NY on Friday, beating the league worst NY Knicks, we will be in 3rd place.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401071429





bob



.

With respect to the team being better w/o Kyrie,small samples are dubious, at best. Good to see the young guys playing so well, but I'd sure like to have a healthy Irving at playoff time. Somebody said we should have had rest days for Bird and McHale. The latter surely shouldn't have played on a broken foot.

7-3 in the last 10 games.  9-1 in the last 10 home games.

31-19 on the season.

Patience

32-19. Winning .6274 % of our games. Last year regular season we were 55-27 for a .670 winning %. We are coming around.

worcester wrote:32-19.

Good catch

We need to go on a 7 game win streak to match last year. If we are 39-10 we are at .6724%.
Shows how good we were in 2017 with that 16-1 start.

Very solid win for the Celtics!
One thing I observed about the game is that Boston almost always had 5 of the best 6 players on the court.
Charlotte is a mess with poor talent and terrible contracts.
Their 5 highest paid players are Batum, Biyombo, Marvin Williams, Zeller and MKG. They make a combined $81.62m this season.
Williams leads those 5 in scoring with a paltry 10.1 ppg.
All 5 are under contract for 1 or 2 more years after this season.
I can't see Kemba Walker staying in that mediocre mess unless Mitch and MJ offer him a max contract.

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For what it's worth, the Celtics now in games decided by 17 or more?

14-0.

Which is what leads to a number like this....





bob
MY NOTE: We're "MOV-ing" right along.


.

Clever Bob.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news.  I hate being the soggy wet blanket on a frigid night.  I do not enjoy being the downpour at the annual picnic.

As I stated in the Next up thread the Hornets came into the game at 7-17 on the road and left 7-18.  Wins against teams like this are simply obligations to play them and win.  There is no newly discovered star in the Universe.  The pathway does not level out.  Great prospects are not just around the corner.

The Raptors are likely to win the east.  They have 7 real tough game remaining with 5 at home and 2 on the road.  Miami is not one of the team included here.  They play The Bucks, SA, Celtics, Rockets and OKC at home.  Philly and OKC on the road.

The Bucks have 9 tough games left with 5 at home and 4 on the road.  They play the Celtics, Pacers, Sixers, Rockets and OKC at home and Raptors, Pacers, Pacers, Spurs and Sixers on the road.

The Celtics have the toughest schedule ahead with 11 real tough games.  5 are at home and 6 are on the road.  At home we have OKC, Rockets, Denver, Spurs and Pacers On the road we have Sixers, Bucks, Raptors, GSW, Sixers, and Pacers.

I am probably under stating the remaining tough games on the schedule which includes two game each with the Lakers, Heat, Clippers and Washington who always play us tough.

If Boston can get through this challenging schedule and not lose any ground it will give me great hope for their playoff chance.  However the key will be winning on the road where Boston has been under .500.  If you are not the #1 or # 2 seed, you must win on the road..  I think we can still finish 3rd and the Pacers drop to 5th or 6th.  We will likely get a 2nd round matchup with either the Bucks or the Raptors.  

The just completed month of January produced a very solid 11-4 record.  Boston had a lot of home cooking.  They beat 2 out of 3 quality teams (Pacers and Raptors)  When they can knock off good teams on the road and at home I will start to feel much better about our prospects going into the playoffs.

You cannot be a serious contender unless you can win on the road against good teams.





,

Especially when you yield home court advantage in the playoffs...

bobheckler wrote:There was some beautiful Celtic ball played last night.  A LOT clicked.  34 assists on 50fgm is a lot of assists and a lot of fgm.  Our 35-16 3rd quarter turned the 2nd half into extended garbage time.  A 35 point 2nd half by the Hornets.

Jaylen Brown's hand must be healing up because he has been playing exceptionally well the last few weeks.  His shooting is getting good.  If we have to give up one of the J's for Davis, at this point, I'm not sure which one I'd want to give up.  Tatum is streaky and disappears for lengths and, unlike Jaylen, doesn't have an injury to blame it on.  Not down on Jayson, but my faith in Brown is being somewhat restored.  24 points on 10-18.  He was 2-8 from 3, which was his glaring weakness last night, his poor shot discipline, but if you look at it from another way he was 8-10 from 2 and that is phenomenal!  That's "you can't stop me!" numbers.  He also had 10 rebounds.  Best game in a while for Jaylen Brown and his games have been steadily getting better over the past week or two.

Tatum had a very good game too after, what seems to me, a general season long slump.  He isn't the same force this year that he was last.  Is that because he's getting scouted now, or is it the "Kobe-Yucky Effect"?  20 points on 9-15.  Between the two J's we got 44 points on 19-33 (57.6%).  In a wing-oriented league, that's devastating.

Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
1 hour ago
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for 44 more points than Anthony Davis last night.

Last night's game should send a message to the GM in Nwalins why they should wait until summer time before making any decisions about Anthony Davis.

Theis with 7 rebounds and 2 blocks in 15 minutes and bee-U-tiful block and then pass up for a streaking Hayward who passed it to Semi for the finish at the rim.  I never thought I'd feel such a feeling of peace, satisfaction and that the world was going right just by seeing a player run a fast break to the iron and not to the corner.

I've been isolating my focus on Brad Wanamaker a lot, especially on defense.  Offensively, he's a solid player.  He doesn't force shots, doesn't try to do things he can't do, he moves the ball around and hits his shots.  Solid, albeit not eye-popping, but if he's going to make it in the NBA he has to play defense and so that's what I've been watching.  He's a solid defender.  Once again, he isn't an obvious defensive force like Jaylen or TRo can be, but he moves his feet to stay in front of his defender and he's never so far off his man he cannot get to him to contest a shot.  If I'm right, he makes Rozier expendable.

Hayward with a solid game too.  I would take this game from him for the rest of the season and feel good about it.  12 points on an efficient 5-10, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, and he seemed to be in the right places at the right times.  Not an OG game, to be sure, but SG (Solid Gordon) game.  The question we may have to wait until next year to get answered is "is the Old Gordon ever coming back?".  For right now, I'll take SG.  I've been down on him, I believe fairly, but I'll also give him credit when he earns it and he earned some last night by delivering an SG game.  Some info on Hayward that might be flying under the radar is that he is averaging more rebounds/minute than any other time in his career (not including the 5 minutes he played last year); he is averaging the 2nd most assists/minute in his career, the most since '13-'14; his assist-to-turnover ratio is better than it was in his All-Star year of 2017; he is tied with his rookie year for most offensive rebounds/minute; he is just .1 steals/minute behind his career-high season of '14-'15; his offrtg/defrtg differential is +2.  My point here is this:  his shooting is off, we all know it and so does he (painfully!) but he's doing well in other aspects of the game.  He's rebounding well, he's assisting well, he's not turning the ball over, he's being a good ball hawk and he's not a drag on the team by costing the team more on defense than he's giving them on offense when he's on the floor.  If we're going to dump on him for his shooting, as we should, we should also see the bigger picture too.

Only 31 fouls called all game, both sides, and it seems like there was a flurry of whistles in the 4th quarter after the game was long, long over.  When the game was competitive the refs really let the boys play.  Loved it.  About as close to '80s hoop as we'll see nowadays and, you know what?, it was very enjoyable game to watch (Adam Silver:  if you're reading this post consider this a hint).

Malik Monk is a completely conscienceless gunner.  Brad also saw him as a defensive liability because he had us go to whomever Monk was guarding every time down the court.  Offensively, Monk has no edit button.

We defended the extremely dangerous Kemba Walker well.  Smarty with a great defensive play on a break.  Not only did he prevent the drive but he stripped Walker and passed it before he went out of bounds.  

Let's face it, a team that has Jeremy Lamb and BisMACK BiiiYOMMMMBOOOOO!!!!! as starters is not a good team.  For them to be in the #8 playoff spot is a indictment of the EC.  Nicolas Batum, however, is a crafty player.  He plays a little like what Hayward is playing like now.  He's not that athletic anymore but he seems to get to where he wants to go.  Hopefully Hayward's athletic decline is just the to-be-expected extended recovery period players with injuries like that need before they are back (see George, Paul).  A nice crafty move by Hayward at about 2:10 of the game highlight video below.

Thanks to last night's blowout, brought to us by our good friends in Charlotte, North Carolina, the Boston Celtics now have the 3rd biggest MOV in the NBA, +6.8ppg.  Only Milwaukee (+9.7) and GSW (7.3).  In other good news we are now 13th in total rebounds/game.  Not great, sorta middle of the pack, but better than we were.  6th in assists/game.  10th in fgm, so we're scoring the ball.  6th in 3pt fg% and 3rd in 3pt fgas.  4th lowest in Turnovers/game.  4th in steals/game.  So, overall, we're doing quite well.  I especially like the MOV stat which, as we go further and further through the season and we've played a lot of games against a lot of different opponents, becomes more and more reliable.  Where we are not doing quite well, as we all know, is in ftas/game.  We are 29 out of 30.  I wish Brad took that stat more seriously.  I know, I know, he says that he wants good, open shots and good, open shots don't usually result in the contact that create the whistle, HOWEVER, those are easy points and I'm a big fan of easy.  Especially The Big Easy (shout out to the Pelicans' GM.  We love you.  Remember that)  

The Pacers are in Orlando on the 2nd game of a b2b and are on a 3 game losing streak after losing Oladipo.  The Sixers are in GSW tonight.  If both of those teams lose and we win in NY on Friday, beating the league worst NY Knicks, we will be in 3rd place.

http://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401071429





bob



.

Good point about streaky Jaylen, he had his first double-double 24-10, surprised he hasn’t done this earlier, physically he should be a good rebounder. Maybe he’s chasing down a lot on the perimeter, leaving him in not ideal rebounding position. You call it streaky, I call it scoring in bunches, we’ve seen him have games where he puts up 17 in a half, the kid can get hot, in a zone. I noticed he has a great developing post up game, where he just jumps up so high and is strong enough to do bullyball, this is something that Brad should be using more.