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Celtics Wrap: Boston Snaps Losing Streak With Convincing Win Vs. Suns
The Celtics earned one of their biggest wins of the season


NESN by Patrick McAvoy

The Boston Celtics snapped their three-game losing streak and got back in the win column Friday afternoon against the red-hot Phoenix Suns at TD Garden, 123-110.

With the win the Celtics improved to 17-19, while the Suns fell to 27-8 on the campaign.


ONE BIG TAKEAWAY
After an abysmal 4-for-42 performance from beyond the arc Wednesday against the Los Angeles Clippers, Boston responded with one of its finest wins of the season so far. The Jayson Tatum-less Celtics controlled action from the jump against the league-leading Suns on New Year’s Eve.

Boston lately has built up leads but imploded in the second half. The Celtics built up a 26-point lead after the first 24 minutes and although at times they seemed poised to blow it once again, they did enough down the stretch to hold on and earn their 17th win of the season.

In the win, the Celtics shot 10-of-27 from three, including nine in the first half.


STARS OF THE GAME
— Robert Williams earned his first triple-double of his young career finishing the day with 10 points, 11 rebounds and 10 assists to go along with four blocks. He dominated play early on and responded in a major way after iffy performances during the team’s losing streak.

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— Jaylen Brown also responded after a subpar performance on Wednesday and finished the day with 24 points and 11 rebounds in 35 minutes of action.


— Marcus Smart returned to the lineup after missing a few games due to a hand laceration and had one of his best games of the season in the win, securing a stat line of 24 points, eight rebounds and three assists.

WAGER WATCH
If you had faith in the Celtics snapping their losing streak, it could’ve earned you some money Friday. Boston was 3.5-point underdogs against the Suns and the moneyline was set at +150 according to DraftKings Sportsbook. If you placed a $100 wager on the Celtics, it would have paid out $150 in profit.


UP NEXT
The Celtics will take New Year’s Day off but return to action Sunday night at home against the Orlando Magic with tip-off scheduled for 6 p.m. ET.

112288

Well, this game just based on who we beat will automatically go onto the very short elite list of games for the 2021-22 season.  9 EC teams could not beat the Suns.  We did.  Handily....Short-Handedly, that is.

Glad to see RWIII get his first 3D!  Nice!!  Good to see AH back.  GW also contributed very nicely and brilliantly took his now strong game away from the 3-point line when he realized that part wasn't working.  He stopped at 3 shots...not 13 or 9 and the clock mercifully had run out. But I digress.

Marcus Smart with a hero game.  He also quit shooting the 3-ball when it was revealed early on they weren't falling.  

Not to steal dboss's thunder on another thread, but this team is wildly inconsistent in the most important area of the game...scoring.  For some reason, I find it difficultly impossible to really rejoice about how good of a game this was and how badly it was needed for the team because I have to immediately worry about Sunday's game and whether we can/will beat the Magic, one of the God-awful worst teams in the league.  And it is a very legitimate, valid concern.  That's where we still are...big, monumental possible turning point victory or not.  I shouldn't feel that way but I'll bet everyone on this site has the exact same feeling.  That's sad, but true.

I'm afraid it's time to pull out my favorite team word descriptor from last year and dust it off for another round...

confounding - cause surprise or confusion in (someone) especially by acting against their expectations. Book it, Danno.    

Let's keep plodding a long, though.  Let's see what happens Sunday.  

db

dBrown 4

I know you dusted off the descriptive word "confounding" when describing the Celtics.  Most if not all think that way about why the Celtics are not a good team.  A handful of us (me included)  do not.  I wish I could say that we are but I have been so disappointed in many of the reoccurring multiple problems that have surfaced a few years back, and continued to this day that explains the hot and cold games that we are currently witnessing.

As you are well aware of the old adage that any poor team can in one moment in time during the season but together and execute a great game plan and beat a top top team.

That is why, although a great effort and execution by the Celtics, does not move the needle for me or gets me to begin fretting over why they cannot be more consistent and better, because simply, they are not.

One of the core problems is shooting.  They are not a good shooting team especially form beyond the arc.  We do not have a proven sniper like Ray Allan or a Sam Jones to stop stop a run by another team by matching FG for FG and negate any challenge run in a game.  Stevens must go out and get a GREAT SHOOTER or two, period!   Tatum and Brown are not your go to sniper when the game is on the line.  That has been proven out over the last few years.  

That is how you begin to turn this team around while rebuilding on the fly while still staying competitive.   That is Al La Bill Belichick!

Second, emphasize defense .........defense.......defense. Bring in another lock down defender to shut down teams.  We have Smart and we have Langford.  Now just add one more to the group.  What good is it that you are scoring points when our team has a hot shooting night on occasion, when the other team exceeds our scoring because we cannot stop them.

Again, I hear your frustration and why you have resurrected the term "confounding" . But I would not agonize over it until we see some personnel changes occur through Stevens and let us see who he decides to bring in via a trade or free agency next year to fix certain problems that are plaguing the team now.

112288

Who were those guys?!

A little bit of angst in the 3rd quarter as the lead dwindled but, in the end, we only lost that quarter by 3 points and considering we had a 26 point lead at the half that was much ado about nothing (credit to The Bard).  Teams always make runs.  We make runs too.  How many times have we been down and then come storming back, sometimes to victory but often not?  

Some more pucker factor in the 4th and that, to me, was more real.  Not just because they were finally playing well but because our legs were getting heavy.  Ime only played 8 players and fatigue was making an appearance.  Pritchard only played 13 minutes, so that means the remaining 227 minutes were divided up unequally between 7 players.  Phoenix, on the other hand, played 10 players double digit minutes.

We need Jaylen (or Grant or whomever) to become the net Players Union President, because Chris Paul was getting the refs to do things that only coaches are authorized to do, like challenging a call.  Challenging a call, and losing the challenge, costs a time out.  You want to do that, coach?  That's your prerogative.  A player?  Convince your coach or STFU.  CP3 did neither and the refs let him get away with it.

Booker 7-26, 1-5 from 3.  Tell your kids about this, tell them you saw this with your own eyes.  You'll be legend.

Jaylen with a somewhat checkered game, 24 points on 8-20 and 11 rebounds.  However, he was 3-9 from 3 and had 6 turnovers.  Only 3 assists.  Jaylen Brown is not a point forward, certainly not yet.  He needs another offseason to work on wtf he needs to work on for that to happen.  I say this as a well-documented Jaylen Brown fan but Ime needs to turn the page on this experiment for now.




Grant with an excellent game.  Great switching defense.  There were times he found himself guarding Booker at the arc.  He made him waste time off the clock trying to figure out how to take Grant and ended up having to pass out.  Perfect.  Short of blocking his shot and grabbing the miss you cannot play better defense against a talent like Booker and you're not physically equiped to stop him.  The #2 3pt shooter in the league went 0-3 from 3, but he did everything else well.  It took 2 full years for Grant Williams to figure out his niche in the league but he's there now.

Marcus Smart with 24 points, tying Jaylen, on 10-18 shooting but more interestingly only 2 3pt fgas.  He just pounded people inside.  I love this Marcus Smart.  He is one of the best post up players in the league and he showed it yesterday.  Also, if you watch either the Marcus Smart highlight film or the Robert Williams highlight film I'm providing you'll see how many of his points came off of Williams passes.  Williams-to-Smart might be as good as Smart-to-Williams.




Of course we cannot overlook The Time Lord's first triple double.  He also had 5 blocks.  What a dominating performance, huh?  Ime has been trying to turn the Js into point forwards and, in my opinion, that has not been a successful experiment so far.  How about Robert Williams?  Why not run high post offenses through him?  He might not be Jokic but he's no AD either.  The Js are almost unstoppable when they are cutting.  The problem, so far, is that they don't seem to cut much without the ball.  They want the ball and then go one-on-one.  Yesterday's game could be a model for us going forward.  Give the ball to RWill at the arc, have guys using him as a screen on a dribble handoff and also have a player cutting baseline.  RWill makes the choice whether he sets the screen or makes the entry pass.  I am far more comfortable with Robert Williams' passing decisions than I am with Jaylen's or Jayson's.  Seriously, barring Brad making a trade for a true bonafide point guard, I think this might be our path forward out of the wilderness.  Point center Robert Williams, The Dime Lord.

Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
yesterday
Robert Williams' 5-block, triple-double Friday afternoon was the first in the NBA in nearly three years (Jusuf Nurkic, Jan. 2019). Only five players have done it in the last decade (Nurkic, Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol, Boogie Cousins and Draymond Green (twice))




Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
yesterday
Rob Williams on Ime Udoka saying "He's more than people think he is:" "shoot, he believes in me a lot. I guess he sees something in me I dont. I'm thankful for the way he pushes me every day, trying to get the best out of me."




For a guy who was hailed as a defensive player with modest offense Josh Richardson has really played well.  19 points last night on 5-10 and 7-7 from the line in 33 minutes.  I thought signing Schroder was Brad's coup of the offseason but I may have been sleeping on JRich.  His 118 Offensive Rating is the beset of his career by far, as is his Net Rating.  He's still playing defense, but he's also contributing to the offense more.

Romeo with 16 on 6-10.  He shot 2-5 from 3.  He's still not a great shooter but he has great instincts, as I have said many times before.  I absolutely love how he goes to the front of the rim.  In a league where everybody runs to the arc and then retreats on a miss Romeo will go to the iron on a shot and positions himself for a putback.  It's hard to get offensive rebounds if you aren't in or near the restricted area.  Romeo is growing on me because he isn't allergic to paint.  Watch this film and see how many of Romeo's points are in the paint.




I'm not a big fan of the +/- stat but I'll quote it here.  Other than Al Horford, who did not have a good game, every Celtic had a positive +/-.  What that tells me is that the outcome was not as dicey as some of us thought it was. We just were suffering from a crisis of faith (not Rosalie, but the rest of us).

123 points and only 83 fgas.  A combination of the 54% shooting, the 26 ftas and acceptable 3pt shooting (37%) can get you a lot of points and you win games by scoring more points than the other guys.  Other than hitting your shots (duh!) how do you get 26 ftas?  Movement.  Make the other team's defense move, rotate, sag, react.  Standing around the arc won't get you to the line much and we got 23 of those 123 from the line.

Obviously we want to play another one like this.  If we can that will cure a lot of ills because the players will see a groove that works and nothing succeeds like success.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401360348


Bob


.

112288,

To be honest, I don't know if this is a good team or not.  On paper, we should be 38-0.
The product on the floor is all over the place. For me, that's what makes them confounding.  Their range goes from just beating the top team in the league soundly to two games shooting 6-68 (or something close) from 3-ville and being blown out vs. the Nets.  None of the top contenders play like that or even have stretches like that. If they do, it's one game and they still wind up winning. Just ask BKN.  

You are correct.  We are flawed.  And as we know, the playoffs will only blow those flaws up into infinite, magnificent detail for all the world to see if we are so lucky to even make it there this year.

Everyone else loves to see this franchise suffer.  We've won enough, they will say.  This is your payback so shut up and eat it.  Karma's a be-atch.  (You can throw the Lakers in there as well.)

So far, no movement on anything happening in the trade arena, at least before 2/10.  Brad's first year as GM is one of major adjustment including full-on player operations to making sure the administrative side of the Celtics runs smoothly.

I know Boston isn't big on mid-season trading but there's a new sheriff in town and maybe he pulls the plug before 2/10 and maybe he doesn't.  

The Atlanta Braves made some big mid-season moves and they became the hot team in the playoffs.  So hot, no one had an answer.  No one came close.  Baseball has a much smaller, tighter margin of error that their moves would be considered completely out of the question in the NBA.

But we will know after 2/10 what the organization's plan is, short-term and long-term.

I'm with you, 112288.  

db

I think Bob covered everything, wish we could bottle this, love the movement, the sharing of the ball, the stand out performances of RWill, JRich, Romeo and Smart. Wish we could bottle this. We may have found a new offensive initiator in RWill from the high post and mid post to cutting wings. Sam our beloved founder used to say if you can do it once, you can do it again in much better scientific words that made sense, why not? If RWill is willing, this adds another positive dimension to our stagnant offense. We’ve been force feeding the J’s to initiate with mixed results, RWill can feed cutters going to basket and on perimeter, he can certainly see over the defense.

On another thread I called out Jaylen as a point/initiator, that he wasn’t good at doing this, well it is so much more evident without Tatum. Without Tatum the defense can gang up on Jaylen too easily, the defense knows how to crowd him and strip him. I thought the stat guys were really generous with him, 6 turnovers, I thought it was a lot more. Let Jaylen do what he does well, soaring and scoring, he can still make the right play, but he’s not or ever going to be a distributor like Harden or even Lavert.

Can we carry the new found passing/sharing and high post offense to
the next game? I hope so. Also PP was electric 3-3 from 3, great Patty Mills imitation. Al looked stumbling and bumbling. Let’s keep sharing the ball, attacking the paint and kick some ass.