POST GAME WASHINGTON - HOME - PLAY-IN

Celtics Wrap: Jayson Tatum (50) Propels Boston To Play-In Win; Nets Next
Boston has earned the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference


NESN by Sean T. McGuire

Jayson Tatum scored a game-high 50 points to lead the Boston Celtics to a 118-100 victory over the Washington Wizards in the NBA Play-In Tournament at TD Garden on Tuesday.

With the win, the Celtics have earned the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference and advance to play the second-seeded Brooklyn Nets in a best-of-seven playoff series.

Tatum scored 23 of his 50 points (14-for-32 from the field) in the third quarter as the Celtics completely turned the game around in the opening minutes of the period. Kemba Walker was equally crucial as the point guard contributed 29 points on 10-for-24 from the field, hitting three of his six 3-pointers in the opening minutes of the third.

Bradley Beal led the Wizards with 22 points on 25 shots while Russell Westbrook scored 20 points on just 6-for-18 shooting.

Here’s how it went down:

STARTING FIVE
PG: Kemba Walker
SG: Marcus Smart
SF: Evan Fournier
PF: Jayson Tatum
C: Robert Williams

EARLY LEAD
The Celtics benefitted from a fair share of missed shots by the Wizards early on — Russell Westbrook tip in, Alex Len layup and dunk — as Boston opened up a 15-9 lead midway through the quarter.


Tatum and Smart each hit a 3-pointer during that run as Boston finished the quarter hitting 50 percent (5-for-10) from long range.

Tatum’s second 3-pointer of the quarter gave Boston a 27-19 lead with 58 ticks left in the quarter.

The C’s took a 27-21 lead after the first quarter. They shot 40 percent (10-for-25) from the floor in the period.

Washington shot just 39 percent from the floor (9-for-23) while missing each of its four 3-point attempts. Westbrook was just 1-for-4 from the field while Bradley Beal was 1-for-5.

Smart led all scorers with seven points while Tatum added six, despite shooting 2-for-8 from the field. All five starters found the scoring column with Walker (five), Williams (four) and Fournier (three) making contributions.


C’s GO COLD
The Celtics’ offense got stagnant and settled for low-percentage shots all while Beal came alive for a much-improved second quarter.


The Wizards erased an eight-point deficit in a matter of four minutes and took a 39-37 lead 6:33 into the second.

Washington received contributions from its bench in the early going with Ish Smith (11 first-half points), Chandler Hutchinson and Rob Lopez helping erase the deficit. The Wizards’ bench out-scored the Celtics 22-6 in the first half.

Beal then took over down the stretch of the period with 11 of his 13 points in the second. Westbrook added eight points on 3-for-9 from the field.


The C’s missed eight-straight shots before Walker stopped the bleeding with a bucket in transition.

Walker and Tatum, though, helped Boston erase what was an eight-point deficit with three minutes left before closing the gap to 54-52 at the half. Tatum scored 18 first-half points while Walker had 12.


Boston shot 7-for-24 in the second while missing nine consecutive 3-pointers. They finished the first half shooting 35 percent (17-for-49) from the floor and 23 percent (5-for-22) from long range.

Notably, the Celtics received an injury scare two different times in the quarter, too. First, it was Smart who limped off with what appeared to be an ankle injury, but he would return shortly after. Robert Williams, however, left for the locker room with 41 ticks left in the half with what appeared to be a leg injury. Williams had missed the previous four games with a turf toe injury.


TATUM TAKEOVER
The Celtics put together a great start out of the half as they opened the third on a 9-2 run, which eventually turned into a 17-2 run behind Tatum and Walker.

Boston hit each of its first four 3-pointers (Walker had three) to take a 69-56 lead less than four minutes into the period.

Tatum led the Celtics the whole way as he scored 23 points in the third quarter alone. It gave Tatum 41 points in the first three quarters on 12-for-25 from the floor.


It also helped Boston take a double-digit lead, 90-80, into the final 12 minutes.

Walker’s trio of 3-pointers were the lone buckets the point guard scored in the period. He went into the fourth with 21 points.

Beal led the Wizards with 22 points to that point while Westbrook contributed 14 of his own.

RUNNING AWAY WITH IT
Washington cut the Boston lead to just seven points two minutes into the fourth, but the C’s used a Fournier 3-pointer during a mini 7-2 run to regain their 12-point lead.

Boston extended its lead to as much as 106-88 following a Tatum 3-pointer with 5:32 left.

The C’s put the game on ice shortly after with Walker hitting a fifth and sixth 3-pointer on consecutive possessions.

PLAY OF THE GAME
This is what started it all.


UP NEXT
The Celtics will face the second-seeded Nets in the first round of the NBA playoffs while Wizards will face Pacers in the final play-in game with the winner claiming the No. 8 seed.

112288

Question, So what did Tatum do differently to night to record a spectacular game!

Answer, He attacked the paint and the rim more often tonight as he did his rookie year!

Question, Why tonight?

Answer, Someone must of lit a firer under Brads ass to get Tatum to attack the paint!

112288

I think we got a whiff of Stevens rotation going forward, and neither Grant W nor Semi figure prominently, unless Time Lord is down. Neither Tristan nor Kornet are capable of playing big minutes and Tacko looks more and more lost, so minutes may be available there. Semi may be called on to clamp down on somebody defensively. Grant , to me, is just too physically limited to be very productive going forward. I will be perfectly happy if Kemba is back next year, and Fournier is re-signed. Tearing the roster down and reconstructing it isn't terribly likely to improve the team ,in my opinion. Draft a solid big and use the exceptions, of which we have several, to build a bench of guys old enough to shave who can provide some bench scoring. Jabari Parker seems to have matured, and might very well be a better option than Ojele or Grant. (Certainly he'll score more) I definitely don't see both those guys coming back..I am very upbeat about the futures of Pritchard and Nesmith. Aaron seems to have a lot of dog in him, ala Marcus Smart.Congrats to Jayson, Kemba and the crew for getting the Celts in the tournament. Random musings.

112288 wrote:Question, So what did Tatum do differently to night to record a spectacular game!

Answer, He attacked the paint and the rim more often tonight as he did his rookie year!

Question, Why tonight?

Answer, Someone must of lit a firer under Brads ass to get Tatum to attack the paint!

112288

They blew open the game early in the third quarter (5 minute mark) on the back of five made threes (3 by Kemba and 2 by JT) to 74-58 coupled with good defense against a limited offensive team (Beal injured in particular).
That’s Brad ball and when the threes drop and the team D plays well they are competitive at a minimum. Tatum was quoted as saying he drove because Wash. got in the penalty on fouls early.
Who do you think lit the fire under Brad’s ass to get Tatum to attack the paint?

Clearly, I was wrong. I've been wrong all my life more than I am right. In this case, I'm glad I was wrong. As of right now, I've only watched the first half and that seemed to be a tale of two halves. We started of strong playing ridiculous defense and I had to do double takes to make sure I had the right game and team on. Then Washington woke up a bit and then I thought I had the right game on as they took an 8-point lead and we started doing the things that made us 36-36. No defense, bricking threes, me-ballin', somebody got injured and left the game, etc.

I'm in for a real surprise when I watch the second half because when I went back to bed at halftime, JT "only" had 19 points. Cant' wait!!

As good as the Celtics looked at times last night, it will take a far more Herculean effort to even get a sniff of a victory in the next round against a team that swept us not even being at full staff.

What would be great is if we swept them. That's what I want. Again, I'm not asking for much. The team that plays real defense against the clowns in Brooklyn and their paper coach will crush them in the playoffs. THAT we are capable of. I want to see Brooklyn desperate. I want to see those three clowns in foul trouble. All of them after the first 3 minutes because we're driving on them and they are reaching. Then their legs get tired and they start building a shopping mall with all the bricks they are throwing up.

And maybe this team gets up for the playoffs. We now have earned a chance to go 16-0!! And our trek couldn't start against a more deserving, pompous team of douche bags than the Brooklyn Nets. It would and will be the greatest upset of all time. Clearly, we have nothing to lose. We're so far out of the conversation for even making it out of the first round we've left the universe as far as the media is concerned. I just want to see the looks on the 3 amigos when they have to report to mic after losing 4 games to the Celtics. Of course, Kyrie won't be there. He'll take the fine. Harden and Durant will step up for the scare-dee cat. Any kind of decent defense will lock up this offensive juggernaut in a flash. We can do that if we want to.

db

CBS Sports had a round table in which they asked 8 "experts" who was going to win all the play-in games.  For our game last night the score was 6-2, Washington.  This is why we play the games regardless of what people think.

Tatum was 6-6 from the line at halftime.  He averaged 5.3 ftas/game for the season, so he was already over his season average from the line at the half.  The only people who can light a fire under Brad are Wyc, Pags and Danny and I have never heard of any of those guys ever going telling a coach, not Doc nor Brad, how to run their team, especially not mid-game.

Jay King @ByJayKing
about 8 hours ago
Jayson Tatum: “I just wanted to be aggressive tonight.” Said once he saw the Wizards in the bonus early, he wanted to put pressure on them and the refs by going to the rim.

Steve Bulpett @SteveBHoop
about 8 hours ago
Whenever I've spoken to Paul Pierce about Jayson Tatum, he's always said he won't be his best until he gets to the free throw line more. Tonight: 17 of Tatum's 50 points were from the line (in 17 attempts). Going hard to the hoop changed the game.


Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
yesterday
Jayson Tatum went 17/17 from the line tonight, the fifth most in a playoff/in game in NBA history, per @Sportradar. Dirk has the record at 24. Paul Pierce has the franchise record at 21, which was the record before Dirk broke it.


It was agreed on the Game On! thread last night that Tatum's game was very "Paul Pierce-like" in that he was trying to create contact.

At one point Jayson was 3-10.  He was 2-8 and 6 points after one, 5-15 at the half from the field, 2-6 from 3, 18 points.  He had 41 points on 12-25 after 3, 4-9 from 3, 13-13 from the line.  That's a 23 point 3rd quarter, on 7-10 shooting, 7-7 from the line.  After watching Washington eliminate our 9 point lead and take a 2 point lead into the locker room Jayson Tatum's competitive juices kicked in and that was that.  A 9 point 4th quarter would be noteworthy by itself, but it's dwarfed by its predecessor.

Scott Brooks tried putting size (Rui Hachimura) on Tatum and Tatum blew past him repeatedly to the rim.  He tried putting speed on him (Bradley Beal) and Tatum just backed him down a little closer and shot over him.  Tatum took exactly what Brooks gave him and that's a mark of maturity.


Chris Forsberg @ChrisForsberg_
yesterday
Three 50+ points games in a 39-day span for Jayson Tatum. In 19 games in that span, he’s averaging 30.9 points per game.


Marc D'Amico @celtics
about 9 hours ago
“Mhmm. He’s right about that.” – Kemba’s response to Wizards coach Scott Brooks saying Jayson Tatum will be league MVP soon.

The Celtic playoff game high was Havlicek, with 54.  Was this a "playoff game", or something else?  




Battle of the Buddies.  Tatum 50/8/4/2blocks.  Beal 22/9/6/2blocks.  And Bradley Beal is All-NBA.  To be fair, his left hamstring was hurting him, you could see him holding it and constantly stretching it on the bench.  Nevertheless, hammy or no hammy, 50 is still 50.

Kemba with a great game.  We lost a lot of games this year we could have won because Kemba wasn't allowed to play in b2b.  Now we see why that was a better strategy than we gave it credit for.  He was fresh, he was healthy and he drove the Wiz crazy.  29 points on 6-14 from 3.  He took a charge from Beal and a charge from Westbrook.  This was the Kemba we have been paying for, and we're going to need this every game going forward.




Fournier was 3-11, but he had 6 rebounds and 4 assists.  When RWill went out with his injury everybody stepped up with their rebounding to replace him.  We need better than 3-11 from our designated gunner, but he played hard and that's Step 1.

Tristan with a 12/12 double-double, 6 of them my beloved offensive rebounds.  He shot 4-9 from the field, which would make you think he's not good after he gets the offensive rebound, but I don't care.  That misses the underlying value of contesting for offensive rebounds.  Contesting for an offensive rebound disrupts their transition offense.  No point in running up the floor if your team doesn't have the ball, right?  And if we're getting the offensive board then you really need to swarm the rebounder and that completely kills any fast break off that sequence.

I don't why I was surprised by Brad's insertion of Romeo.  I forgot that Brad is a matchup coach and putting our best wing defender not named Jaylen (his description) on Russell Westbrook makes sense.  Westbrook is not a good outside shooter.  So the only way to beat him, because of his freakish athleticism and court vision, is to stay in front of him with enough size where he can't just post us up.  6'5", 6'11" wingspan Romeo Langford on 6'3" Russell Westbrook makes complete sense, I should have anticipated it.  I had assumed Brad would just settle upon a playoff squad and live-or-die with them.  Brad doesn't live-or-die with anything set in stone, he adapts.  Sometimes his adaptations work, sometimes they don't.  This time it worked.  Mr. Triple Double was 6-18, 0-4 from 3 and, more importantly, only had 5 assists.  Force Westy to shoot from outside, that's your only hope, and he will.  The idea of him not shooting, even if they're not his best shots, is even more abhorrent to him than Smart not chucking up 3s early in the shot clock is to him.  Smart's 3pt shooting this season is 33%, not so hot, but Westbrook's was 31.5%, even worse.  Putting a player like Romeo on him was a great idea.  I don't care if Romeo scored or not, he just had to keep Westbrook out of the paint.  The Wizards had 17 assists on 40 fgm.  That's what happens when you can contain Westbrook, he's their floor general.

Our assist-to-turnover ratio was 20 assists against 38 fgm.  We shot a worse fg% than them, but we did it more as a team than them and that is due to our success at not letting Westbrook manipulate our defenses on his drives.

Ish Smith loves playing against us.  He's who Tremont Waters should use as a model, preferably while he's here and not after he's gone and plays against us.  Smith uses his small stature to his advantage.

I'm waiting on what the impact of The Time Lord's injury is this time.  I'm thinking he doesn't play through pain well, but I'm willing to hold off on that conclusion until I find out why he came out after only 14 minutes last night.

Marc D'Amico @celtics
yesterday
#NEBHInjuryReport update: Coach Stevens says that Rob Williams hyperextended his toe: “He’ll get treatment and we’ll see what happens." Marcus Smart twisted his ankle, but Stevens says he has “a weird feeling that he’ll be ready for practice Thursday, knowing Marcus.”


We won the game last night despite shooting < 40%.  That's unusual, to say the least.  Our fritos made the difference, 32-20, but that's not all, 12 ftas alone do not explain an 18 loss.   They had 15 turnovers and we had 10.  For the last month we've been a turnover machine but not last night.  Only 10 turnovers will help offset a lot of shooting woes.  Another reason why we won is because we were 15-45 from 3, out of 96 fgas.  We shot a TON of 3s.  Washington was 3-21, both an awful % as well as a small % of the total fgas.  This is today's NBA, you gotta take a lot, and hit, your 3s.  You can do everything else right, and holding us to under 40% is doing something right, but if you don't hit your 3s and they do you're in deep kimchi.

They only shot 43%.  Our defense was pretty good even as our offense was not.


Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
yesterday
Robin Lopez's hook shot is ballet in its purest form






https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401326989


Bob


.

DBrown, I love you posts but I think it is a little wishful thinking on your part. I am actually waiting for this season to end so we can get on to real business of fundamentally changing this teams personnel for next year! Perhaps I am having a bit of wishful thinking myself! LOL.

Danny almost all ways disappoints in the off season.

112288

Two observations:

When I saw Langford was in and not PP I thought maybe PP had an injury I missed. Then I watched Romeo play defense for a few seconds and thought "Oh yeah, Romeo defense." I'm no coach but RL looks like an elite defensive player. Not for his age. For any age. His long arms and footwork allow him to harass the opposition without committing fouls or making risky attempts to steal. He just plays classic, straight up defense. If the opponent scores, so be it. But he had to work for it. RL's shot may be off but considering he's had two surgeries in two years on his shooting hand/wrist, I would be inclined to take some time to let him develop a shot. Plenty of time. His defense is that good.

The other observation is that Marv Albert was out to lunch. If he wasn't drunk or ill or distracted by some personal affairs, then he's losing his faculties. At the very beginning of the show he seems to be distracted or lost. Then during the game he continually misidentified players. Perhaps it's time for him to hang up the mic.

Agree on all points atcross. Albert can't even recognize the ref calls.

Marv Albert will be 80 next month and is retiring at the end of these playoffs.
He has lost some of his luster. Like most humans age does diminish capabilities once had. Dick Stockton was worse at a younger age.
Marv is an acquired taste for some but for me he belongs in the broadcast HOF.
I can hear Marv in a lot of these younguns calling games today that will never be as good as even Marv’s son’s grand babies (i know great great) . So for what its worth, I’m going to enjoy what’s left of him:>). Which is a far cry better from what we have as a color analyst locally. This man reached a new low yesterday when he let it out the bag that he was not aware that Joe Frazier had died.
The man has been dead and stinking for almost 10 years!!
So give me Marv, Mark, Dick, Reggie, Draper errr yea! Hell anyone other than u no who.....

OK Ktron...Joe Frazier.

Now we're talking the Golden Era of Heavyweight Boxing. 70s into early 80s.

All of these fighters were active at that time...

Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Ken Norton, Oscar Bonavena, George Chuvalo, Buster Mathis, Jerry Quarry, Jimmy Ellis, George Foreman, Chuck Wepner (The Bayonne Bleeder), Joe Bugner, Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers, Ernie Terrell, Duane Bobick.

Lots of fights on network TV back then too.

cowens/oldschool wrote:Duane Bobick really?

Not saying he was the greatest, but he fought often with a good record. Despite losing in seconds to Ken Norton, Bobick won 48 times, 42 by KO, against only 4 losses. He also beat Teofilo Stevenson in the Pan Am Games. One of the highly visible heavyweights from the 70s. While you could say he fought a lot of Patsies, he stayed active and beat a few with decent records.

As you can tell by my mention of Wepner, I wasn't going for a best of all time list!

NYCelt wrote:

cowens/oldschool wrote:Duane Bobick really?

Not saying he was the greatest, but he fought often with a good record. Despite losing in seconds to Ken Norton, Bobick won 48 times, 42 by KO, against only 4 losses. He also beat Teofilo Stevenson in the Pan Am Games. One of the highly visible heavyweights from the 70s. While you could say he fought a lot of Patsies, he stayed active and beat a few with decent records.

As you can tell by my mention of Wepner, I wasn't going for a best of all time list!

Teofilo Stevenson was a Cuban heavyweight with hands as heavy as George Foreman's.  He'd throw out the occasional jab at your chest, and when you lowered your guard or chin to stop him from hitting you in the throat or clavicle he'd drop an overhand right on you like a trip hammer and you went down.


Bob

.

Cow,

Art Stocks Playpen is another blast from the past. I think there were 3 or 4 locations. The original might have been somewhere in Florida, I'm not sure. One was here in Rochester. I spent a lot of my early take-home pay there. Great place for a young single guy at the time.

Wasn't Wepner thought to be the inspiration Stallone used for Rocky?