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Tatum nets 37, leads Celtics past Morant, Grizzlies 120-107

ESPN BOSTON

BOSTON -- — Jayson Tatum scored 19 of his 37 points in the fourth quarter, leading the Boston Celtics past the Memphis Grizzlies 120-107 on Thursday night.

Al Horford had 21 points and 15 rebounds, Robert Williams finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds for the Celtics, who shot 51.7% and won for the ninth time in 11 games. Marcus Smart finished with 18 points and 12 assists, Derrick White scored 12 and Grant Williams 11.

Ja Morant, coming off a career-high 52 points Monday night in a win over San Antonio, scored 38 for Memphis after struggling through the first quarter. Desmond Bane finished with 17 points and seven assists.

Boston started pulling away in the second half, opening the third period on a 10-2 run and then turning to Tatum, who was celebrating his 24th birthday, throughout the fourth.

After Bane hit a 3-pointer that pulled Memphis within 91-84, Tatum scored six straight for Boston and followed that with an assist on a jumper by Payton Pritchard that put Boston up 99-84. Tatum scored the next eighth points for Boston, then added a 3-pointer that finished off the Grizzlies, giving Boston a 115-100 lead with 1:34 left to play.

Morant, who was 0 for 6 in the first quarter with a pair of free throws, ended up scoring 30 points in the second half as he tried to keep the Grizzlies within range. He did show his leaping ability late in the second quarter on an alley-oop, slamming down a one-handed dunk off a pass from Kyle Anderson to pull the Grizzlies within 45-42 with 1:39 to go before halftime.

SHORT-HANDED

Already missing starting forward Jaylen Brown with a sprained right ankle, the Celtics lost his replacement to the same injury early in the first quarter when Aaron Nesmith rolled his ankle after going up for a defensive rebound. He did not return.

TIP-INS

Grizzlies: Never recovered from a slow start, making 8 of 29 shots in the first quarter and hitting just 2 of 14 3-pointers. ... G/F John Konchar missed his second straight game with a sprained left ankle.

Celtics: First-year coach Ime Udoka was named the NBA Eastern Conference coach of the month Monday after Boston went 9-2 in February. … Boston led 26-20 at the end of the first quarter despite committing six turnovers.

UP NEXT

Grizzlies: Host the Orlando Magic on Saturday night.

Celtics: Host the Brooklyn Nets on Sunday afternoon.

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Gut check game

We passed with flying colors, no Jaylen, lost Nesmith, didn’t matter.

Tatum put up a scintillating performance, attacking and a great version who’s not taking too many 3’s. Al with his best game of the season. RWill another good game. Smart with some great defense that broke the game open and 12 assists.

11 games above .500

Al Horford's demise has been greatly exaggerated. It's like he's found the fountain of youth.Once we quit turning the ball over, we took charge.I wonder if any of our members who were critical of the trade deadline acquisitions and felt that we emerged with a weaker bench have changed their minds.We picked up Nick Stauskas, a high draft choice in 2014, who has kicked around the leqgue sice then. He was raining threes in the G league, for whatever that's worth. Tough luck for Nesmith This would have been a great opportunity for him .Here's hoping he's not out long.Nets on Sunday. Has Simmons suited up for them yet?

I went into the game confident when Barkley dissed us in the pregame

Celtics showed their improved play is the real thing. Down one of the two best players and pulling out a win against a tough western division team proves the Celtic momentum is no fluke.

Morant is incredible. I’ve read opinions that claim he should get either MIP or MVP. I think he deserves both.

There was no point in this game where I thought we would lose.  It was frustrating to see way too many turnovers but the Celtics where playing well on both defense and offense.  They just needed to clean up a few things by halftime.

Al Horford had an A+ game while tying his season high in points (21) and setting a season high in rebounds (15)  When he shoots the ball like that it changes how good the Celtics can be.  He also had 5 assists and 2 blocks.  His defense was great!

Al's  game overshadowed how well Robert Williams played.  He recorded his team leading 21st double double last night and once again he filled up the stat sheet.  Rob scored 10 points and had 12 rebounds to go along with 3 assists, 3 steals and 3 block shots.

Our 2 bigs dominated their two bigs plus Theis was very solid adding 6 points, 6 rebounds and 2 assists in only 13 minutes.

The only player in the NBA that can stop Jayson Tatum is Jayson Tatum.

Robert Williams made an elbow jumper.  An identical smooth stroke just like his foul shots.

This win goes into the signature column.  The win was a complete team effort.

Correction, RW has 22 double doubles to lead the Celtics.

Al Horford gets the game ball, in my opinion.  I know about Tatum's game, and it was phenomenal, but Al came out on fire and played like a demon the whole game.  35 going on 25 year old All-Star.  Yeah, I wanna know what his diet is.  I'm not 35, but I'm not playing NBA big neither, I'm sure it'll still help keep the Grim Reaper away a little longer (on a side note I found out last night during the Game On that a long-time friend of mine died on Wednesday.  He was only 54, dead of cancer.  See you again, Shawn.  I hope wherever you are it's as much fun as you were and they serve Guinness and Jamesons because I'm probably ending up seated next to you, again.).




A 27 point 2nd half for Tatum.  I know, it's hard to give Al the game ball with Tatum doing that but as we've all seen Tatum cannot do it alone.  Still, a real eye-popper from Jayson.  He had 6 turnovers, his obvious weakness, but some of those weren't his fault.  He was getting doubled and we weren't moving to open spaces quickly enough for him to have a lane to pass to.  

Gary Washburn @GwashburnGlobe
yesterday
When asked what he does when Jayson Tatum gets hot in the 4Q, Marcus Smart said: "Make sure I stay out of his flip*' way."




Ja Morant is something else, isn't he?  3-14, 0-5 from 3, 8 points at the half.  38 on 13-29, 4-12 for the game.  As great as Tatum was Ja Morant's 2nd half made this a game.  30 points, 10-15, 4-7 from 3 in 20 minutes of playing time in the 2nd half.  Wow.

11 turnovers in the first half, along with 7 steals by them, made the first half a lot closer than it should have been.  They got 14 points off of our turnovers in the 1st half and steals are, basically, live turnovers that can be fast breaked back, and quite a few of them were.   In the 2nd half we had 3 turnovers.  3.  3 more steals for a total of 10 but only 3 turnovers made a big difference.  One thing I think we've all noticed about Ime is that the Celtics come out of the locker room after halftime adjusted.  He's better than Brad, I think, at getting them fired up right from the opening tap, I remember how many icy cold 1st quarters we used to have with Brad, but Ime definitely lights a fire under them at halftime.  In the end the final count was 14 turnovers for us vs 7 for them and 10 steals for them vs 4 for us.  24 change of possessions by us vs 11 for them.  If we weren't so casual in traffic this would have been a BIG blowout because we shot almost 52% on the game but they got 10 more fgas because of those change of possessions.  Think of that.  We just beat a team with the 3rd best record in the NBA without Jaylen by 13 and, if we had just been a little more careful with the ball, it'd have been 20 or more.  Quick hands by the Grizz paid off due to our looseness.

33 assists is our regular season high for a regulation game.  33 on 46fgm with 5 players in double digits is a difficult offense to defend because everybody's involved and a lot of players are threats.  Smart with 12 assists to lead the way (and only 3 turnovers) and Horford and Tatum with 5 each but every Celtic who played had at least one assist, even including the unfortunate Aaron Nesmith who only played 5 minutes.  That's good ball movement.




A great battle between RWill and Jalen Jackson Jr.  Similar players, Jackson with the better offensive repertoire but Williams the better defensive anchor.  As pointed out RWill got the ball 18-19' out, saw the defense had sagged on him, took one dribble up to 16' and hit the elbow J.  Do that a few more times and it'll open the floor up for cutters which he will hit.




Steven Adams with 8 boards, 7 of them offensive. I think I'm in love. And that doesn't even include all the tap outs he got that got retrieved by another Grizz who got the credit for the rebound, and he had a lot of tap outs.


Mark Murphy @Murf56
yesterday
Tatum on what's changed: "Watching us now, we play with a lot more passion and we just seem like we’re having a lot more fun. Obviously when you’re winning you tend to play with a little more enthusiasm and smile and laugh and things like that. It wasn’t happening too often."


Jay King @ByJayKing
yesterday
Jayson Tatum: "We went through some growing pains. New team, new staff, things like that. Dealing with COVID, guys were injured, I ain’t hit no shots. So guys stopped getting COVID, we got healthy and I started making some shots."


Sean Grande
@SeanGrandePBP
This is now a 9-week, 30-game sample size...




Sean Grande
@SeanGrandePBP
With the 13-point win over the 43-20 Grizzlies, the Celtics are now 25-9 this year in games decided by double-digits.

They continue to lead the East in scoring differential and Net Rating, and sit in a pretty impressive spot on this list....




https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401360759



Bob


.

All I can say right now is WOW!  I'm almost speechless.  

jrleftfoot, you stole my words I was going to say about Big AL.  Fountain of Youth.  Great game by him doing work, ala Kobe.  

Also, JT had a certain swagger, bordering on cocky but contained himself to remain very confident.  The media was all over Morant from the get-go.  JT was not going to let this kid show him nor the team up.  Notice it was a tie in scoring but TEAM won.  That's a huge step in maturity for JT.  Scary step.  He also resorted to driven to the basket and only put up 2-7 3's.  Thank God his 2-point and 3-point numbers weren't reversed and he bricked 2-24 from 3.  Our two bigs beat the the crap out of theirs.

Ktron tried to tell us.  Ime's got something.  And everybody on the team is buyin' in.  Patience.  BTW, Stephen A. on First Take was Ktron, Jr. today on Ime.  He didn't say anything new that Ktron hasn't said already about Ime.  

Let's see how the press squirms out of this one.  Thanks, Charles.  The two teams you think will be in the ECF, BKN and PHI, will not be there.  One of those two will be lucky to make it out of the first round.  OK, it's BKN.  

Also, everything else around us helped last night.  Want to see if those who saw the end of the BKN vs. Heat game noticed the same thing I did.  It adds to my 3 strikes and your out.  I'm going to apply it to both BKN and PHI.  It doesn't matter.  But there are now 2 strikes.  But I digress.  Heck even the Lakers had it handed to them.  But that's starting to get sad and that's coming from a Celtics fan!  

dboss, nice picks.  You know what's coming Sunday!  This is easily a signature game and may be in the top 1 or 2 for the season, although winning Sunday will go a long way WITH Kryrie.  

Stifling defense.  Let's put it up against two real scorers Sunday and see where we are.  I'm not expecting that much of a different result initially.  Will wait for dboss assessment.  

WOW!  That's all I've got to say.  

If you watched the end of the BKN vs. MIA game, did you see KD with 7 seconds left in the game?  I know this is trivial but winning and losing is separated by inches.  And KD, on his first game back showed why BKN won't be going to the second round.  I know the game was essentially over at that point, but he was half way to the locker room when the clock ran out on the final possession dribbled out by Boston.  Strike 2.  Totally unsportsmanlike.

Also, in Philly, the love affair with James Harden is still in the honeymoon phase.  He loves the fans.  The fans love him.  When it gets passed that and the inexplicable losses start mounting, that's when the wheels will start coming off the wagon in accelerated fashion.  Patience.

Ja Morant was impressive and everything everyone has been hyping but he's got about 5 more years of depression/losing/missing the playoffs, being surrounded by the wrong talent and bad management decisions to live through before things turn around for his team. Then we can pick him up in a massive trade or as a free agent. Nice kid though.  

db

DB

I actually think Memphis is a really good team. It looks to me that a developing core of Morant, Jackson and Bane is a great place to lay down a foundation, You can throw Dillon Brooks in there as well.

Their majority owner is a young 42 year old billionaire,
Robert J. Pera.

Their coach, Taylor Jenkins, comes from Pop' s coaching tree.

They got 3 first round picks in the 2022 draft and tons of money to sign an elite level player or two very good players.

I agree. Memphis does have a good team. DB also has a point. It’s very hard to keep players of Morant’s caliber in smaller markets for the bulk of their career. Hell, and Memphis is not only small. It’s also a depressing place to live in my opinion. FEDEx is keeping that town from caving completely. 2 years ago I flew into Memphis on a Friday evening and left on the next Saturday evening. I swear if I had launched a hand grenade in the airport nobody would've even heard it go off. There was hardly anyone in the joint, most of the airport shops were closed and this was during peak travel time. It’s a dying city but they somehow were able to hold on to the grind house boys for a good 5-6 yrs. Some of the fans and media have already pissed Morant off because they were 10-2 when he got injured so, you know the “team is better without him” rants came to the surface. I could very well be wrong. Morant may be as country as a dozen of fresh farm eggs and wind up loving that stinking place. Somehow I doubt it.
I didn’t care for their owners either. The way they treated Hollins and Fisdale was awful. I don't know how much Pera had to do with it. He didn't take controlling interest of the team until 2018 but he’s been part of the ownership group since 2012. Another self made Billionaire Techy. Worth more than 7 billion and obviously smart as hell but that doesn't mean he won’t screw up this team. Right now they have a good thing going. However, Taylor Jenkins as good as he may be better keep his head on a swivel.

BTW, just saw on ESPN JB is day-to-day. Just FYI for Sunday.

db