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Celtics Wrap: After Dicey Start, Jayson Tatum Leads Boston Past Bucks
After a disappointing first quarter, the Celtics turned it around


NESN by Jenna Ciccotelli

BOSTON — The last time the Milwaukee Bucks came to Boston, both sides were shorthanded, with the Bucks down Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton and the Celtics missing Jaylen Brown. But it was all hands on deck in Monday’s rematch.

And with everyone on board, the Celtics put away the Bucks, 117-103, to improve to 14-14. The Bucks dropped to 18-11.

ONE BIG TAKEAWAY
The Celtics desperately needed to find their defensive groove heading into the second quarter after they allowed the Bucks to end the first frame on an 18-4 run, resulting in a 30-21 lead for the visitors.

And they found it as they stormed back to enter the half with a 51-50 lead after a 20-11 run of their own. After the Bucks closed the first quarter hitting 57.1% of shots from the field (12-of-21), they headed into the break closing in on just seven of 19 attempts in the second quarter.

After that, the Bucks never led again. Milwaukee finished the night shooting just 44.4% from the field, compared to 50% shooting by Boston.

STARS OF THE GAME
— Jayson Tatum led all scorers with 15 points at the break, which he turned into 42 points by the end of things. He finished shooting 16-of-25 from the field with five rebounds and four assists.

— In his return after a six-game absence, Brown finished with 19 points in 30 minutes on the floor.

— Jrue Holiday and Antetokounmpo both tallied 20 points for the Bucks.

WAGER WATCH
The Celtics sat at -105 on the moneyline heading into Monday’s tilt, meaning a $105 bet would win $100 at DraftKings Sportsbook.

Those who took Tatum’s propositional bets could have really lined their wallets.

Anyone who pegged him to score at least 35 points was rewarded with less than six minutes to play when he hit his 14th field goal of the night. Anyone who wagered $100 on the prop at DraftKings would have received a nice $425 reward.


UP NEXT
The Celtics have a few days off before hosting the Golden State Warriors on Friday. Tip-off is at 7:30 p.m. ET at TD Garden.

Well slap me down and call me bee-atch!! WTH, Bo?!! Looked like someone showed a starving man a menu! Clearly we were VERY happy to see Jaylen back and hit his first few shots right out of the gate.

Our defense appeared to be stifling and rattling to the Bucks.

And of course, we were almost sent in a complete tailspin 5 minutes in as Jaylen appeared to have the worst possible luck with a hobbling knee injury. Really?!! WTH?!! Can we be ANY more unlucky with the injuries?!!

That game was a relief and much needed for sure. Three-ball was falling. Defensive was down right humiliating if you were up against it. I didn't count the TO's but it appeared there were many. Only 11. Nice. Fouls were low. GW had a great game. Whoever he hired to work on his three ball he needs to share with the whole team or train them himself. He must have stayed up into the wee hours of the morning during the summer or something or he just has the key. I love that story whatever it is. All we know is he did something over the summer and it changed his whole career. I'm almost ready to label him the "I" word.

JB came back like a house on fire. Looks like he's even lost a little weight. Might need to get back in the weight room IMHBAO.

As always. Glad to be completely wrong here with my prediction abilities. That game seemed to be a statement. There was going to be no time period of re-adjustment getting JB back into the game with limited/restricted minutes, blah, blah, blah. That game seemed to say we are ready to go full throttle and hold onto your seats.

As is on cue, the schedule says, "Well, really? That game was just a tester because the NBA world had you on the fence and Old Mike Tyson was loading up on this home stand with the Bucks. Let's see how you do against the best and being fully loaded." And we as Celtic fans the last two years immediately have to ask ourselves as a .500 ball club was that game we just saw a fluke? Well Friday will once again tell us everything we will need to know.

I was very impressed for this game given who we were up against. Please accept my most humble apologies for leading the get our shoot together parade.

Also, unless they sit Curry vs. the Knicks, the Ray Allen record breaking won't happen on our court. That would be pretty crappy of them to break it on our court AND beat the bejesus out of us.

Road doesn't get any easier. It goes straight to the top of Mt. Everest Friday.

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Jaylen playing really helped the team, ofcourse Tatum being in a zone carried us along with big 3’s and good all around play from GWill got us the win despite the usual brick laying from Smart, who also plays good D. Some sequences that stand out were Jaylen defending Giannis and getting the steal and in 4th at crunch time shutting down Holiday. Then read a stat that said with Jaylen on the floor, we have the no 1 ranked defense. Still remember in the first Heat game, Jaylen completely shutting down Butler and Herro whenever he was on them.

If Marcus was just a below avg shooter, he would be so great, the fact he still helps us with being such a brick layer is a testament to his defense and toughness. It’s the offense that costs us games if others aren’t on enough to cover for him. I know Rondo was no great shooter either, but he didn’t over shoot like Smart still does way too much. Oh well, he did have 11 assists and we won as team had some of their best ball movement in a long time. Hopefully that can continue with 3 days off to finally practice. I also like the way Romeo played, hit some 3’s and always defends multiple positions, as does Jaylen, Jayson and Smart.

Scal was saying how great we were playing against the zone, wasn’t sure if it was? Will have to check out game again, either way the offense definitely looked good overall, everyone making the extra pass.

The Bucks played their fourth game in six nights, all on the road.  At Miami, Houston, NY and then Boston.  The last two were back to back.  This game was going to be hard for them to win no matter how we played.

With that said, we played a very solid game, except for late in the first quarter when they went on the 18-4 run.  It was like their last gasp before we turned up the pressure, causing them to turn the ball over or take bad shots.

Nice coming out party by Grant.  He started the game in second place for shooting corner threes, I imagine he is now in first place.  That's not all.  He acts more like a veteran player than a third year pup.  I don't know how much trash talking he does, but he does play mind games with players of the other teams.  He was walking through the circle prior to them shooting a frito and touched the player's hand.  Applying a jinx?  He got caught the second time for a delay of game.  Watch in future games to see if it becomes a thing.

WINNING IS a CULTURE NOT ONE GAME! We will play some good teams in the next few weeks, and that is what Forsberg said, we will know in 9 games if they have either turned the culture in the locker room around or this past win was April Fools coming early in December.

Sorry to be a hard ass but, I am not going to wait 22 more years like the last time for a championship team. The Celtics need to take a page out of the Patriots who rebuilt the team on the fly and now sit atop the AFC. We are now 10 years from that 7th game final in LA and counting!

112288

cowens/oldschool,

Agreed. I remember Rondo would be at 10 assists by the start of the 2nd quarter typically. His points would dribble in. (no pun intended) He would get a lot of And 1's and brick the FT. He would razzle-dazzle around the rim like Menace does and get easy layups if the Big 3 were locked up. MS could take a page from Rondo for sure. That's a great thing I loved about Rondo as even though he was in his second year still almost a rookie, the Big 3 included him in on the initial swallowing your ego conversation and did not leave him out. And he was right in line. Knew his role IMMEDIATELY and never waivered. MS may be too far along and entrenched for ego swallowing, although Paul Pierce did it after many disappointing seasons and being the King of Boston circa 2007. MS hasn't gotten the message on the brick laying side still. Everything else, I wouldn't change a thing. Nice to see 11 assists though. Maybe it's a breakthrough.

Again, everything will be put into perspective come Friday night. It's the best of the best coming to town. Mediocreville is still selling tickets all day long. Are the Celtics still buying or are we moving on? And please, no moral victories here. It's Showtime.

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The first game at home after a long road trip is usually a scheduled loss.  We were helped by the Bucks being on a SEGABABA and being without a few players, while we finally got Jaylen back.  They were down Lopez, we were down JRich.  But the win was based upon more than just this.

Brian Robb @BrianTRobb
yesterday
Ime Udoka says he showed Celtics over 100 clips of bad defense from the team's 1-4 road trip in film session before tonight. "The big picture of seeing that trip and where we ended up defensively, we didn't like that feeling. We got back to who we were tonight."

Jay King @ByJayKing
yesterday
Grant Williams on Ime Udoka’s statement his film session was animated: “Yeah, it was animated.”

Tom Westerholm @Tom_NBA
yesterday
Jayson Tatum said Udoka's film session was honest and open. You really do get the impression Celtics players appreciate Udoka's coaching style even when (maybe especially when) he challenges them directly.

So, Ime did his job and it appears they listened.  That's actually a big deal.  If they were already tuning him out we'd be in a lot deeper doodoo than any of us have thought we are because rookie GM Brad Stevens is unlikely to fire rookie head coach mid-rookie season.

It's usually fairly easy to pick who gets "the game ball".  This game I'm having some trouble because there are some legit contenders.

1.  Jayson Tatum.  42 points on 16-25, 7-13 from 3, 3 steals.  He looked like he could do anything he wanted, inside and outside, all game.

This is his shot chart just before his last shot.  As you can see he was completely dominant in the paint.



Mark Murphy @Murf56
yesterday
Udoka's message to Tatum: "I gave Jayson examples of what I said to Kawhi as a young rookie, respecting guys too much at times. These guys aren't your older brother, don't treat them like that. He took it to heart and came out in attack mode tonight but it's across the board.”




2.  Jaylen Brown.  He changed the game.  During the road trip it was so easy to disrupt our offense because all you had to do is double-team Jayson and force someone else to beat you.  Jaylen came out, for the first time in a while, and attacked.  He had 5 points on 2-3, 1-1 from 3, in the 1st quarter and 12 points at the half on 4-9, 2-4 from 3.  The ball was going into his hands at the top, not Jayson's, and it changed how Coach Bud played defense.  All this talk about "the end of the Js Era" is based upon our record after missing Jaylen Brown for at least half-a-dozen games.  Well, yeah, we're going to look bad when we lose an All-Star.  F'ing duh.  What the absence of Jaylen showed me is not that the Js can't play together.  In fact, it showed me the exact opposite.  It showed me they can't succeed without each other.  It showed me we don't have quality depth behind them.  I realize you can't just slot a bench player into an All-Star's minutes and get the same result, you need more than one to do that, and we don't have them.  Josh Richardson, alone, can't do it.  Richardson and Nesmith might be able to do it (defense and offense) but Nesmith didn't getting the minutes to validate this hypothesis.  Bottom line, we're a different game when the Js are both playing and that's why Jaylen Brown gets consideration for last night's game ball.  He changed the calculus.

Jaylen knocked knees last night.  No biggie.  Thank you, God.




3.  Grant "Baby Faced Assassin" Williams.  What a game by him, huh?  Our bench scored 34 points.  Grant owned 17 of them.  5-7, all from 3 and some gritty, physical defense.  He was getting beaten on like a drum last night.  If he wasn't getting bulldozed by an increasingly frustrated Giannis he was getting two-hand thrown to the floor by Bobby Portis.  Grant popped right up off the floor and got into Portis' face.  Bobby Portis is not "fake tough", he punched Nikola Mirotic in the face in practice.  Sent him to the hospital with 2 broken bones and gave him a concussion.  And that was his teammate.

Brad showed tremendous confidence in Grant when he was coaching, and some of us wondered "why?".  Ime is also showing tremendous confidence in Grant.  Why?  Because he is eminently coachable.  The coach tells him what he wants and Grant goes out and tries to do it.  Brad wanted him to put on weight so he could play smallball 5 and Grant did it (a terrible experiment as it turned out but that's not Grant's fault).  Ime told Grant he wanted him to lose those pounds and work on his shot.

Jay King @ByJayKing
yesterday
Ime Udoka on Grant Williams’ physicality and dust up with Portis: “We didn’t like some of our lack of physicality (on the road trip). We talked about that and said, ‘I’d rather you guys put somebody on their ass or get into it with somebody than let guys waltz down the lane.’”



This is all Grant listening to coach.

John Karalis @John_Karalis
yesterday
Jayson Tatum, Grant Williams seems to like talking. Does he talk about how well he's shooting now? "Every day"

Watch the ball fake he puts on the defender at about the :20 mark.




Honorable Mention for Game Ball for Marcus Smart.  Still can't shoot worth a shite (1-6, 2 points) but he had 11 assists and zero turnovers.  I can live with this Smart.

Khris Middleton, one of the best pure shooters in the NBA, with 2-8 shooting, 4 points, only one 3pt fga.  Grayson Allen 2-6 from 3.  He's shooting 41.4% from 3 this season.  Arlington's own Pat Connaughton 2-7 from 3.  He's shooting 42.4% from 3 this season.  Don't tell me we're not a different team with Smart and Brown playing defense on shooters.  If we lose Jaylen for the season then we might be F'd, but that still wouldn't be a good reason to trade him since when he is healthy we are lethal.

Schroder 2-10, 1-5 from 3.  Love ya, but it's time to go, Dennis.  



Jared Weiss @JaredWeissNBA
yesterday
First career points for Sam Hauser, who will have half of Boston advocating for him to start by January

Yeah.  Chris Mannix too no doubt.

Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
yesterday
Over the last two seasons, the Bucks are 80-44, have an MVP and a world championship. They’re also now 1-4 against the Celtics.

So, maybe this isn't a fluke?


Chris Forsberg @ChrisForsberg_
yesterday
Twice Grant Williams tried messing with Bucks free throw shooters by touching their hands They gave him a delay of game tech the second time. pic.twitter.com/PunD5fOSdA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1470568586288766980

Funny stuff.  Playing the mind game.  Love it.  Keep it up, Grant.

A very tough game coming up vs GSW on Friday, obviously.  An opportunity to show this game was the turnaround.

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401360232


Bob


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Good points on J’s bob, I don’t know why anyone would want to trade either J, they still have their best years ahead of them. It’s not like your gonna get Jokic or Giannis for either and right now I wouldn’t even trade Luka or Anthony Davis for either one. We just need to be patient with improvement or acquiring the right pieces. If Nesmith and Romeo can make a jump by the end of next year like GWill, the team could be loaded and have adequate shooting to make a deep deep run.

Jay King @ByJayKing
about 41 minutes ago
Romeo Langford on Ime Udoka: “He’s different from Brad, but I really like him.” Said Udoka holds everyone accountable for their mistakes and also rewards people when they do well. Said he’s gotten guys to buy in quickly.



John Karalis @John_Karalis
about 1 hour ago
Ime Udoka says Jaylen Brown came out of the Milwaukee game feeling fine.



Bob


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