Most NBA teams struggle when their star players are unavailable. The Celtics continue to prove they’re a historically dominant outlier.
Playing without an injured Jaylen Brown for the second consecutive game, Boston bludgeoned the Atlanta Hawks 123-93 on Monday night at State Farm Arena. The win capped a 3-1 road trip for the Celtics, who will carry a 7-1 record into Wednesday night’s wildly anticipated matchup with the Golden State Warriors at TD Garden.
Brown, who’s nursing a hip flexor strain, has missed a total of 14 games since the start of last season, and the Celtics have won all 14, underscoring just how uniquely deep and talented their roster is. They’re also 38-7 during that span without starting center Kristaps Porzingis, who has yet to return from offseason leg surgery.
Jayson Tatum ensured there would be no letdown against the underdog Hawks, pilling up 28 points, nine assists, six rebounds and two steals in arguably his finest performance of the young season. Tatum shot 10-for-21 from the floor and 6-for-14 from 3-point range, and his totals would have been higher had the Celtics not led by 30-plus for most of the second half, resulting in an early hook for Boston’s starters.
Twenty-six of Tatum’s points came in the first half. Head coach Joe Mazzulla called it “a really well-balanced game by him.”
“He found advantages because he was creating space,” Mazzulla told reporters in his postgame news conference. “He got a couple in transition. He drove. He had a good balance of shooting threes and driving in the first half, and then they started to hit, and then he was just making plays. He had five assists in the third quarter. Just a well-rounded game by him.”
Tatum is sure to be uniquely motivated for Wednesday’s contest after Warriors head coach Steve Kerr infamously glued him to Team USA’s bench for much of the Summer Olympics. Eight games in, he’s certainly looked not just like a player deserving of Olympic minutes, but like a legitimate NBA MVP candidate.
The Celtics’ backcourt trio of starters Derrick White and Jrue Holiday and sixth man Payton Pritchard combined for 55 points and nine made threes. Center Neemias Queta scored 10 points, grabbed seven rebounds and was a team-best plus-31 in the first start of his NBA career.
All-Star Hawks guard Trae Young managed just two points in 23 minutes on 1-of-10 shooting, snapping his streak of 70 straight games with at least 10 points and five assists.
“He’s a great player. I just thought we played good team defense,” Mazzulla told reporters. “I thought we reestablished our defense on this trip, and it takes all five guys to guard him.”
Tatum, the NBA’s top first-quarter scorer by a country mile this season, delivered another dominant opening frame: 16 points on 6-of-8 shooting, including 4-for-6 from 3-point range. He’s scored at least 13 first-quarter points in six of Boston’s eight games.
The Celtics trailed early in the second quarter, but an 11-0 run fueled by White, Holiday and Pritchard gave them a lead that quickly ballooned to double digits. Holiday and White blocked shots during that spurt, and Holiday and Pritchard drained threes, with White assisting on both.
Pritchard, an early favorite for NBA Sixth Man of the Year, entered Monday ranked fifth in the league in made 3-pointers per game (4.1), trailing only Anthony Edwards, Buddy Hield, LaMelo Ball and Jordan Poole. Tatum sat just behind him in sixth (3.9).
Boston led by five when Tatum, who played the entire first quarter, reentered at the 6:29 mark of the second. The Celtics proceeded to score 23 of the next 29 points to take a 75-53 lead into the locker room. They feasted on Atlanta’s 28th-ranked defense and routinely capitalized on Hawks errors, owning a 22-0 edge in fast-break points and a 20-2 advantage in points scored off turnovers before halftime.
The lead swelled to 37 in the second half, and Boston hit the 100-point plateau before the end of the third quarter. Mazzulla emptied his bench with more than eight minutes remaining, giving ample late-game minutes to Jordan Walsh, JD Davison, Jaden Springer and Baylor Scheierman.
Seven different Celtics players recorded steals in the game, and six blocked shots, with Al Horford notching two of each. Horford started alongside Queta in a new-look starting five, with Luke Kornet and Xavier Tillman both seeing meaningful minutes off the bench.
Queta appeared to be out of position on a few early possessions, but he settled in as the game progressed. Overall, it was an encouraging road trip for the 25-year-old – one of the few current Celtics contributors who was not part of Mazzulla’s playoff rotation last season.
Over the four games, Boston outscored opponents by 51 points with the Portuguese 7-footer on the floor.
“He’s just grown a lot as a player, and quite honestly, he doesn’t know how good he can be,” Mazzulla told reporters. “He’s got a great ceiling, so the standard’s very high. I thought he did some great things for us tonight, but when you’re as good as he can be, we’ve all got to hold him to that standard every single night.
“So it’s a credit to him for just allowing us to coach him. It’s a credit to the guys for supporting him. But you’ve seen what he can be when he’s at his best, and he can be a real asset for us. … He’s starting to realize how good he really can be, and he’s working at it.”
With Golden State also winning Monday night over Washington, Wednesday’s showdown on Causeway Street will feature not just the eagerly awaited Tatum-Kerr clash, but also a matchup between two of the NBA’s top teams. The Stephen Curry-led Warriors are off to a 6-1 start after missing the playoffs last season.
Whether Brown, who also has reason to be ticked at Kerr after being left off the Olympic team entirely, will be healthy enough to play Wednesday remains to be seen. Mazzulla called him “day to day.”
Originally Published: November 4, 2024 at 9:47 PM EST
