Western expansion
C’s stay hot far, far away
DALLAS — By the end of the night, the Celtics had won the past three games on a western road trip, after starting it with a stinker in Sacramento.
As they pulled within two games of Eastern Conference-leading Cleveland with last night’s 111-98 triumph against Dallas, it was finally OK for the Celtics to look ahead.
“We’re always looking forward,” Isaiah Thomas said. “That’s the team ahead of us. I know my sights are set on Cleveland, though the others probably aren’t worried about them. We’re in reach, but we just have to keep it going.”
That’s why, win in hand, Thomas and his teammates immediately started talking about what’s coming up in their last two games before the All-Star break.
The C’s host the surprisingly good 76ers tomorrow, then bounce out to Chicago to complete a back-to-back on Thursday.
Despite missing Avery Bradley (Achilles) for 18 of the past 19 games and Jae Crowder (family emergency) for two games on this trip, the Celtics won three of their four games away from the Garden. Overall, they have won 10 of their past 11.
“It means a lot. More important are these last two games,” said Thomas, who extended his streak of 20-point games to 38 with 29 against the host Mavericks. “We have to end these last two games on the right foot, and we believe we can get two more.”
Crowder returned after missing the games at Utah and Portland and had the same idea as his smaller teammate.
“That’s how you get better. That’s how you approach the season,” Crowder said. “Even if we had gone 0-3 or 0-4 on this trip, that’s how you have to move forward. We have a good mindset in this locker room, and coaches keep us looking forward to the next game.”
There’s good reason for looking ahead, too. The Celtics, with a 16-of-34 (47.1 percent) performance from downtown, are fourth in the league with made 3-pointers at 670, behind only Houston, Golden State and Cleveland.
For all of the long-range shots they drained in Dallas, it was a previously missing ingredient that had Thomas and Crowder most excited.
The C’s used a 19-5 run after Devin Harris cut the their lead to 88-87 on a 3-pointer with 9:02 left. Dallas barely could breathe during the next 5:42.
“We just kept getting stops,” Thomas said. “We got a few easy baskets in transition, but the biggest thing in the fourth quarter was the stops. We kept contesting their long 2-pointers, and we got out running for easy baskets. It gave us a little bit of separation.”
James Young, with a fourth-quarter role for the second straight game, this time had his biggest impact with defense and rebounding. Marcus Smart, with 19 points in his latest Dallas homecoming, was typically impactful in the defensive end.
And when it was time to kick out with that 19-5 run, Kelly Olynyk scored seven of his 15 points, and finished at a team-high plus13. Young was a plus-12 — the same as Thomas. The Celtics continue to move the ball at an elite level.
“We’re playing the right way, especially late in the game,” Crowder said. “Guys are hedging really hard on Isaiah in pick-and-rolls, and we’re spacing the ball on the other side, getting the ball outside through our bigs. Our bigs have done a great job of knowing when they’re attacking and making the extra pass. That’s really playoff-type basketball, and I think we’re getting really good at that.”
And now here comes the All-Star break, after the next two games, of course.
“It’s hard to win a game. I thought we got outplayed the first night and that was probably some of a function of us but more of a function of Sacramento,” Brad Stevens said. “I thought they played great. And then the last three games I thought we played pretty well. But you’ve got to stack these on top of each other and you’ve got to let it go because you play Wednesday night against a team that’s playing really well and feeling really good about themselves and then you turn right back around and play Thursday. So it’s on to the next one.”