Post Game - Celtics vs. Oklahoma City Thunder - Wednesday, April 03 (W)

https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore/_/gameId/401585733

Celtics-Thunder takeaways: Porzingis dominates as C's clinch NBA's best record

https://sports.yahoo.com/celtics-thunder-takeaways-porzingis-dominates-022411965.html

Justin Leger
Wed, Apr 3, 2024, 10:35 PM EDT·4 min read




Celtics-Thunder takeaways: Porzingis dominates as C's clinch NBA's best record originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

Wednesday night at TD Garden, the Boston Celtics clinched the No. 1 overall seed in the NBA playoffs with a win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The C's took care of business against a short-handed Thunder squad that played without star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (quad) and talented young wing Jalen Williams (ankle). Boston played at full strength and it showed in the final score, 135-100. The team closed out an otherwise tightly contested matchup with a 42-17 fourth quarter.

With this victory, the Celtics are now 11-0 at home since Feb. 4. They're a league-best 60-16 on the season.

Kristaps Porzingis and Jayson Tatum led the way for the C's with 27 and 24 points, respectively. Jaylen Brown, back in the lineup after missing Monday's win with a hand injury, dropped 15 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter.

Josh Giddey (17 points) and Luguentz Dort (15 points) led the Thunder in the scoring column.

The Celtics will host the Sacramento Kings (44-31) on Friday night. First, here are three takeaways from Wednesday's win.

OKC still has no answer for Kristaps Porzingis

The last time these two powerhouses met on Jan. 2, Porzingis dropped a team-high 34 points on 12-of-18 shooting in a losing effort. Three months later, the Thunder still lack a solution for the Celtics big man.

Porzingis picked up where he left off against OKC with 17 points and nine rebounds in the first half. "The Unicorn" made seven of his 10 shots in the first two frames, including all three of his 3-pointers.





Porzingis dominated the Thunder on both ends of the floor. In addition to his 27 total points on 11-of-14 shooting, he racked up 12 boards while protecting the rim with five blocks.

According to Celtics stats guru Dick Lipe, Porzingis is only the second Celtic ever to have at least 27 points, 12 rebounds, five blocks, and four assists in a game since the block stat became official in 1974. Robert Parish is the only other player in franchise history to accomplish the feat, and he did so three times.

Porzingis, acquired from the Washington Wizards last summer, has been the X factor for Boston this season. If the Celtics bring home Banner 18 in June, he'll be among the biggest reasons why.

Second unit steps up

Porzingis and Tatum didn't get much help in the scoring department from their fellow starters through the first three quarters, forcing the bench unit to pick up the slack. It did exactly that.

Al Horford played a starring role in the win with 16 points on 7-of-10 shooting (2-4 3-PT). The veteran big man added four rebounds, two assists, and a block in 25 minutes.



Horford and Porzingis combined to shoot 18-for-24 (75 percent) from the floor. The rest of the team shot 32-for-68 (47 percent), and that number was much lower heading into the explosive fourth quarter.

Payton Pritchard contributed 11 points on 4-of-10 shooting and made an even bigger impact as a playmaker. He dished eight assists to go with four rebounds and two steals. He and Horford were a +23 and +32, respectively.



Sam Hauser went 2-of-5 from deep and made a pair of shots late in the game to finish with 10 points in 22 minutes.

The Celtics bench was scrutinized earlier in the campaign, but it's safe to say it's no longer considered a weakness. Horford, Pritchard, and Hauser headline a group that makes Boston one of the deeper teams in the league heading into the playoffs.

Thunder shut down from deep

Oklahoma City entered Wednesday's matchup shooting an NBA-best 39 percent from beyond the arc, just above the No. 2 Celtics (38.9 percent).

The C's overtook the Thunder for the top spot with a stifling defensive performance on the perimeter. They limited OKC to an uncharacteristic 5-of-24 (20.8 percent) from deep, its worst 3-point shooting performance since it shot 17.2 percent against Golden State on Dec. 8.

Of course, having Gilgeous-Alexander probably would have helped the Thunder in that department, but the Celtics' defensive performance was impressive nonetheless. Meanwhile, they were 17-of-40 (42.5 percent) from deep with seven of their players hitting two or more shots from behind the arc, including all five starters.

That's a recipe for success.

While I think we can beat OKC in the Finals I don't think we should use this game as a measuring stick of that.  Down 2 stars, SEGABABA, there were enough reasons/excuses/explanations to take this 35 point beatdown with a huge grain of salt.  

But that doesn't mean this wasn't a significant victory.  It was.  The significance is that we clinched home court all the way through the playoffs as far as we go.  It's hard to understate how significant that is, although saying we are 33-3 @ home this season should be enough.

Cameron Tabatabaie
@CTabatabaie
The Celtics are 33-3 at TD Garden this year with 5 home games remaining

Since the NBA moved to an 82-game season in '68, only two Celtics teams have done better at home




I have to admit I am quite enamored with their movement.  With the ball, without the ball, their players were moving.  Tommy used to say "Move the ball or move yourself!".  39 year old Head Coach Mark Daigneault of Leominster, MA has them playing Tommy-Ball.  Maybe that's why I'm loving it.  As we all know the ball can stick a little too much in the Js hands.  That didn't happen much with the OKC squad last night.  They were driving with the ball or they were cutting without it.  Our perimeter defenders kept getting caught watching the ball and their man used that distraction to backcut him.  What we saw last night from OKC looked a lot like "Pop-ball", and Pop-ball won 5 Championships.  Yeah, I know he had Robinson and Duncan and Manu and all that, but that's the point.  Those 5 came despite players retiring.  OKC has a really good team.  This was supposed to be a rebuilding year, they own every draft pick for the next 35 years (a slight exaggeration perhaps) and yet they were #1 in the West until this morning.  And they are young, really young.  I like 21 1/2 year old 6'8" Australian Josh Giddey.  Dort's a bull.  Same size as Jrue, built like Jrue and plays physical bullyball like Jrue.  They know how to build teams in OKC, they built a team in a few short years with KD, Westbrook, Harden and Steven Adams.  We do too, I'm not knocking what Brad's done, but they've got a good bead on it in OKC too.

But their lack of their stars doesn't fully explain their defense.  We shot 54% on the game, 42.5% from 3.  Their defense is 12th, giving up 113ppg.  SGA and Williams would have put more points on the board for them but how about our 135 points?

Sean Grande @SeanGrandePBP
about 10 hours ago
Oklahoma City entered the night as the #1 3-point shooting team in the NBA. They made a season-low 5 in the loss. Ending the night as the new #1 3-point shooting team in the NBA? The Boston Celtics.


Sean Grande
@SeanGrandePBP
The top 23 NBA offenses the last two months.

The gap between Boston and #2 (Lakers), is bigger than the gap between the Lakers and the rest of the list.

The 2023 Kings set the NBA record with 1.186 points/possession.

The 2024 Celtics are at 1.226.

Like hitting 80 home runs.




In the Battle of the Bigs our Big won hands down.  A great game by The Unicorn.  27 points on 11-14, 3-3 from 3, 12 rebounds, 4 assists and zero turnovers and 5 blocks.  He completely dominated Chet Holmgren who was 5-14 and 0-3 from 3.  That makes the Thunder's Big 5-11 from 2, which is not good for someone who plays under the basket like him.  Porzingis plays like he's never been happier, he always has a smile on his face, and why wouldn't he?  After dying slowly under Dolan for 3 years, coming up short under Cuban for 3 1/2 seasons and wandering in Washington for 2 1/2 years he is on a team with an indisputably decent shot at a Championship.

Our other Big, Al Horford, had 16 points on 7-10, 2-4 from 3.  I'm not used to seeing Al going 5-7 from 2.  In fact I'm not used to seeing him take 5 2pt fgas in a game, much less make 5.  Remember, Al had a short and not totally satisfying relationship in OKC.  They retired him, effectively, to play the young'uns.  It's hard to argue with that, given how well those young'uns are playing now, but it had to sting a proud man like Alfred Joel Horford.  Never piss off a proud man, they never forget.

Time to bore you with some math:

We now have 60 wins with 6 games to go.  Last season we had 57 total.  We have the #1 Offensive Rating in the league @ 123.3 points/100 possessions, and the #3 Defensive Rating @ 111.6 points/100 possessions.  Critics say that's just us feasting upon a weaker conference, but we're 21-7 (.750) against Western Conference teams.  Our record vs EC teams is 39-9, .813.  So while we're better vs EC teams it isn't THAT much better.  In fact, our .750 winning percentage vs WC teams would still give us the #1 record in the NBA (#2 Minny, and #3 Denver's, overall records are 53-23, .697).  If our W-L record is inflated by feasting upon weaker EC teams then Minny and Denver's records are inflated too, albeit not as much because we play more EC teams than them.    

Boston vs EC = .813 (39 - 9)
Minny vs EC = .601 (17 - 11)
Denver vs EC = .821 (23 - 5)
OKC vs EC = .704 (19 - 8 )

Denver's record vs the East is slightly better than our record against the East (.821 vs .813) but their record vs WC teams is worse.  That means they could get knocked off before the Finals by a WC team.

I just hope our guys remember that we still have to play the games, nobody is going to lie down for them.


Bob


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