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Brown, Tatum paid up to lead Celtics past Pacers 128-123

ESPN BOSTON

BOSTON -- — Jaylen Brown scored 32 points and Jayson Tatum had 31 to help the Boston Celtics stop a rare late-season stumble and beat the Indiana Pacers 128-123 on Friday night.

The Pacers lost their sixth straight game despite getting 30 points from Tyrese Haliburton before he fouled out early in the fourth quarter with Indiana trailing 103-101. The Pacers kept it close, down 124-120 when Al Horford found Tatum coming down the lane for a dunk that all but sealed Boston's win.

Horford scored 17 points with 10 rebounds for the Celtics, who had won 24 of 28 games before losing to Toronto on Monday night without four of their starters. They followed it up with a loss to Miami on Wednesday — the first time they lost back-to-back games in two months as they climbed from below .500 to the top of the Eastern Conference standings.

Oshae Brissett and Jalen Smith scored 17 points apiece for the Pacers.

The Celtics scored 11 of the first 13 points in the game before giving up the next nine points. Boston took a 37-28 at the end of the first quarter and led by as many as 10 points in the second.

FOULED OUT

Haliburton had 22 points at halftime and had 30 points on 10-for-11 shooting — including 6 for 6 from 3-point range — before picking up his fifth foul with 4:27 left in the third quarter on a collision with Boston's Derrick White while going for a loose ball.

Haliburton complained about the call, and got coach Rick Carlisle to challenge it, but it was upheld. Haliburton sat out the rest of the third and the first 3:33 of the fourth, then lasted just 14 seconds before fouling out, drawing jeers from the crowd.

TIP-INS

Before the game, the Celtics honored longtime Pacers director of media relations David Benner. Celtics vice president Jeff Twiss presented Benner, who has worked for the Pacers for 28 years, with a piece of the Boston Garden parquet floor. ... Celtics swingman Nik Stauskas missed the game with a right ankle sprain. ... Pacers guard Malcolm Brogdon missed his seventh straight game. ... Celtics G Marcus Smart limped off to the locker room at the end of the first half after a collision with Daniel Theis. But Smart returned for the third quarter. ... For '90s night, the Celtics brought back 1991 slam dunk contest winner Dee Brown. ... Jaylen Brown appeared wobbly after getting hit in the face by teammate Grant Williams but he also returned. ... Tatum had three 3-pointers, giving him 222 for the season, tying Antoine Walker's 2002 mark for the second-most in franchise history.

UP NEXT

Pacers: Host Detroit on Sunday.

Celtics: Host Washington in regular-season home finale on Sunday.

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Would have liked to see an easier victory, they really pushed us and kept on draining 3’s until the end. Thankfully 2 J’s were on, Tatum was cold early, later started scoring and put on an incredible dunking clinic with in game/traffic dunks that were as good as any HoFer. He’s so skilled, he doesn’t get enough credit as one of the premier dunkers in the game. Jaylen carried us early and thought he didn’t get enough calls on his drives, should have had at least 3 or 4 more and 1 opportunities. This kid Halliburton was in an unstoppable zone, glad we attacked him on defense and got him to foul out.

Our defense is not on the same elite level without the Timelord, we knew we would be missing him, but thought the D would still be better than this. Hated giving up 91 points by the 3rd to a team that came in on a losing streak. We need to get more out of White and GWill both ends, GWill finally gave us some post scoring, his 3 point shooting being very off recently. White had 2 fg’s, hated seeming him drive and get stopped and need to squirm for help. Guess he did get to the line, but would like to see more impact from him. Glad we started Al and Theis, Theis earned it with his last performance and his big man defense is real and much better than GWill.

Will be interesting to see where we end up in final standings and a lot of teams are already using load management to rest their star players. Clearly getting franchise players healthy is more important than seeding/record.

Jeez imagine if we got CJ McCollum, instead of White? That guy is a scoring machine. I’m seeing guards score on White more than I would like….

A "W" is a "W". I'll take it. We're going to have to dig ourselves out of those situations when they arise. What was us with MIL? They trying to tank as well? And it arose.

Prety sure our climb is through with these last 4 games. Probably looking at either TOR or CHI now. Just guessing.

HUGE, CRAZY weekend of games all around us in the East and if you're watching the end of the Lakers as we know them, the West. My DVR is maxed out with recordings today and tomorrow with NBA and NCAA. Watch/know your start times as they are all over the place. Yours should be too!! Should be a blast!! Enjoy!

db

cowens/oldschool wrote:Would have liked to see an easier victory, they really pushed us and kept on draining 3’s until the end. Thankfully 2 J’s were on, Tatum was cold early, later started scoring and put on an incredible dunking clinic with in game/traffic dunks that were as good as any HoFer. He’s so skilled, he doesn’t get enough credit as one of the premier dunkers in the game. Jaylen carried us early and thought he didn’t get enough calls on his drives, should have had at least 3 or 4 more and 1 opportunities. This kid Halliburton was in an unstoppable zone, glad we attacked him on defense and got him to foul out.

Our defense is not on the same elite level without the Timelord, we knew we would be missing him, but thought the D would still be better than this. Hated giving up 91 points by the 3rd to a team that came in on a losing streak. We need to get more out of White and GWill both ends, GWill finally gave us some post scoring, his 3 point shooting being very off recently. White had 2 fg’s, hated seeming him drive and get stopped and need to squirm for help. Guess he did get to the line, but would like to see more impact from him. Glad we started Al and Theis, Theis earned it with his last performance and his big man defense is real and much better than GWill.

Will be interesting to see where we end up in final standings and a lot of teams are already using load management to rest their star players. Clearly getting franchise players healthy is more important than seeding/record.

Cow,
RE: defense. Sure, Timelord is intrinsic to the defense that's been working the last 2 months. But Theis is a good substitute, he just needs time to adjust and get adjusted to. I hope the last 5 games will be enough for that.

AK

Not the best defensive game we've played in a while, no doubt about that, but we won despite losing a player that has become (almost) as important to the defense as Marcus Smart.  Smart's the defensive coordinator but having a mobile athletic big like RWill who can cover the corners and still be fast enough to collapse on the paint to change shots cannot be easily replaced.  Certainly not in one or two games.  Playing Theis and Al together to create some chemistry is critical now and through if/when RWill can come back.  Our defense will take a hit until then, we're just going to have to accept that slippage for now.

Our offense, though?  Pretty frippin' good.

Sean Grande
@SeanGrandePBP
If it feels like the Celtics dominant defensive run has faded, Boston has dropped to 6th in the NBA defensively since the All-Star break.

How have they won 14 of 18 since?

Since the break, the Celtics now have the NBA's #1 offense.


We know, with RWill, we have an elite defense.  This graphic tells us we also can have an elite offense.  If we can put those together for 16 playoff games we'll have #18 because it's hard for any team to stand up to a top 5 defense and a top 5 offense going at the same time.

I didn't see how the Pacers could have gotten better by trading Sabonis but I'm seeing it now.  Buddy Hield had another shite game against us, he's 50/50 it seems, but Tyrese Haliburton sure looked like an assassin last night.  30 points in 26 minutes, 6-6 from 3.  Wow.  He was just physically incapable of defending either of our back court players Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart.  We have a physically punishing 6'3" point guard and a 6'7", 225# SG with a 7' wingspan.  That's a tough match up for anybody, as the league is now learning.

This is the, what, 6th (7th?) time this season the Js have both scored 30+ each?  The record had been held for decades by Bird/McHale with 4.  The Js are just crushing that.  It could be a long time before any Celtic duo beats this record, unless it's the Js next year.

Tatum also had 6 assists with only 1 turnover to go with his 31.

Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
yesterday
Jayson Tatum (averaging 27.1 per game) is now 23 points away from becoming the 7th Celtic in franchise history with a 2,000 point season. Here's the NBA scoring race entering the final nine days of the season...



Sean Grande
@SeanGrandePBP
With his 2nd 3 tonight, Jayson Tatum just tied Antoine Walker for the 3rd most in Celtics history.

He would need to make 25 over the final 4-plus games to break Isaiah Thomas’ franchise record.



This is only because 'Toine couldn't take 4s.

A very athletic cut and finish by Jaylen at the 1:40 mark.







I thought Al and Theis held the front court down pretty well.  A combined 27 points on 12-16, 2-3 from 3 and 18 rebounds.  As long as the rest of the team is doing their job those are good numbers from those guys.  Horford also had 6 assists and only 1 turnover (same as Tatum, this is not a typo).  Ime said he wants to give Theis more minutes on the floor with Al and so far so good I think.

Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
yesterday
In case anyone missed it, or misinterpreted his answer Wednesday, I asked Al Horford directly if he would be good to go/cleared to play in a potential playoff series in Toronto. His answer. "Absolutely."

That means Al is vaccinated.  Al is a very important cog in Ime's machine, even before the injury to RWill, and his play has been very good of late.   Remember when people were thinking he was too old when we got him from OKC?  He's averaging 29mpg this season.




29 assists on 45fgm.  That's pretty good too.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401360972


Bob


.

Jaylen cam to play last night, no fooling around. It is so easy to rag on Tatum, he shows that he still needs to grow up a little, and yet........he ended up with 31 points. The game comes so easy to him it is almost scary. He has admitted some of this himself. Haliburton put on quite a show last night, putting the team on his back for three and a half quarters. What a stud

we will have things to work on, with Rob out there are holes in the defense that need to be addressed in the next few games.

They kept saying last night that Philly wants to come in in the 4th spot, Running away from Brooklyn ??

I hate having the Celtics playing against teams that have no immediate future.

The Pacers do seem to match up well against us.

I would have to say that this was a much needed win.

The J's played great and AH and DT also were excellent.

Our defense however will need to be a lot better once the playoffs starts. Robert Williams absence is a clear and present danger.

You would imagine that an EC, with 4 teams all bunch up together, would have incentives for every team to go for the gusto. It does not appear to be that way.

Yeah, dboss, I'm' beginning to wonder as great a plug-in-play DT has been, RWIII is a much bigger loss here in the short run than we may want to believe.

And it has been great to see RWIII playing more consistently, he's going to log 61 games for this season with this injury finishing up this season. That's 3/4 of the season. Much better than anything so far for his time in Boston, but that's still a good chunk of the season missed. That will make it a continued challenge for Ime for RWIII's tenure as a Celtic. Still don't know how you solve it.

But the current team sans RWIII has one mission. Figure out how to finish out the season without slipping and get through the first round of the playoffs in one piece. That's pretty much it.

These first two games sans Williams are definitely an adjustment period. I have 100% confidence Ime and the team will figure it out. If we go 2-2 over the next 4 games, we should be fine. I'll take that looking at the level of the competition. Our team might take it as a challenge and not accept anything less than 3-1 or 4-0. We'll see as it plays out the last week here. It's been a great season. And I can't wait for the next 5!!

db

Just wanted to add what a great plethora of dunks by Tatum

sinus007 wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Would have liked to see an easier victory, they really pushed us and kept on draining 3’s until the end. Thankfully 2 J’s were on, Tatum was cold early, later started scoring and put on an incredible dunking clinic with in game/traffic dunks that were as good as any HoFer. He’s so skilled, he doesn’t get enough credit as one of the premier dunkers in the game. Jaylen carried us early and thought he didn’t get enough calls on his drives, should have had at least 3 or 4 more and 1 opportunities. This kid Halliburton was in an unstoppable zone, glad we attacked him on defense and got him to foul out.

Our defense is not on the same elite level without the Timelord, we knew we would be missing him, but thought the D would still be better than this. Hated giving up 91 points by the 3rd to a team that came in on a losing streak. We need to get more out of White and GWill both ends, GWill finally gave us some post scoring, his 3 point shooting being very off recently. White had 2 fg’s, hated seeming him drive and get stopped and need to squirm for help. Guess he did get to the line, but would like to see more impact from him. Glad we started Al and Theis, Theis earned it with his last performance and his big man defense is real and much better than GWill.

Will be interesting to see where we end up in final standings and a lot of teams are already using load management to rest their star players. Clearly getting franchise players healthy is more important than seeding/record.

Cow,
RE: defense. Sure, Timelord is intrinsic to the defense that's been working the last 2 months. But Theis is a good substitute, he just needs time to adjust and get adjusted to. I hope the last 5 games will be enough for that.

AK

I’m a huge Theis fan, I was rooting for him to get more PT in the 19 season, I was pissed BS was giving so many minutes to the one dimensional snail Morris, all he had was a mid range jumper, and liability on defense, too slow to cover 3’s and too small to cover 4’s. Theis should have gotten more minutes on that team, playing the 4 next to Al, but Brad let the inmates run the asylum that year.