Celts figure out way
Finish off Charlotte after blowing lead
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A large portion of the crowd went away happy on Fan Appreciation Night last evening. The only problem for the Hornets was that so many Celtics followers showed up.
The C’s certainly welcomed the 121-114 victory, coming as it did on the heels of losses to Cleveland and Atlanta, but the way they arrived at the outcome was cause for a bit of unease. Having clinched the best lottery chance with Brooklyn’s loss on Friday, the Shamrocks still have work to do to cement the second seed and maybe even take another shot at passing Cleveland for No. 1, so this was important.
Isaiah Thomas went for 32 points to lead six C’s in double figures, but they had to claw back after seeing a 19-point third-quarter lead dissolve into a seven-point fourth-quarter deficit.
During a timeout with 6:37 left, Brad Stevens drew up a key play and drew on some wisdom.
“It is a little bit,” said Thomas regarding the bittersweet nature of the evening’s itinerary, “but coach even said in the huddle. He said, ‘Don’t think there’s not going to be playoff games like this. Just figure out a way to win.’
“At this point in the season, it’s about just figuring out ways to win. Games are going to be different every game, so we’ve got to get better at it when we do have leads, sustaining the other team’s runs and continuing to play the same way. I think that’s a problem we have right now. But we will get better, and we’ve just got to keep working at it.
“When he said that, it was real. In the playoffs, there’s going to be different types of games where you’ve just got to figure out a way to win. (Last night) was one of those games. They took all of the momentum from us, and it felt like it wasn’t going to go our way. And we made a couple of plays on both sides of the floor, and we got a win.”
Finding themselves down 104-97 after being so far ahead, the Celts dusted themselves off and arose for nine straight points, beginning with a huge 3 from Avery Bradley, part of his 11-point period. Kemba Walker put Charlotte back up with three free throws on a Marcus Smart foul, Bradley hit his second trey in the period and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist scored to tie it at 109 with 2:50 to go.
Thomas put the Celts ahead again on a drive, and Smart came up big when he ripped the ball away from Kidd-Gilchrist inside. Thomas hit two more freebies, and he and Bradley stuck treys as part of 10-2 run that won it for what seemed like the second time in the same night.
“You want every 17-point lead to stay that way, but very rarely does it,” said Stevens. “It’s a long game. People go on runs. Usually you can stem the tide when it gets to a certain point. We weren’t able to do that, but we’re going to face adversity throughout the next few weeks, and we have to be able to respond, so that was good.”
One game after giving up 71 points in the first half in Atlanta, the Celts torched the Spectrum Center strings for 71 of their own, scoring on 14 straight possessions running from the first period into the second. They hit 62.8 percent of their shots in the first 24 minutes and led by 17 at the break.
Kelly Olynyk, starting in place of an ill Amir Johnson, was well on his way to his first double-double in more than a year (13 points and rebounds before fouling out), and all was well.
The C’s proceeded to push their lead to 19 early in the new half, and they were still up by 17 with a little more than seven minutes left in the third quarter when the Hornets did to them what they had done to the Hawks in Atlanta on Thursday.
The locals began hustling, and the Celts got flustered. An 8-0 Charlotte run turned into 12-2, and by the time the teams went for the quarter change, it was a six-point game.
The Hornets then scored 16 of the first 21 points in the fourth, the last 10 consecutively, to come all the way back for a 104-97 lead with 6:38 left. Then the Celts came all the way back to life.
“I thought what got us in the third quarter was just kind of taking turns on offense and not really playing with as much purpose as we needed to,” said Stevens. “And then when (Nicolas) Batum gets rolling like that (31 points), he’s a hard guy to stop. They made a ton of shots, and, you know, they put us in a corner. And that’s hard when you’ve had the lead and they take it all the way up to seven. To come back and win it, that shows a lot of resolve.”
The fact they had to was a bit troubling, but getting back on the right track was good enough for this night.