For one night, C’s meet expectations
This is how it looked in all those Greenheart dreams. Celtics followers and even the lion’s share of NBA pundits had envisioned this all through the offseason as the Bostonians prepared to add Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward to a team that had gone to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.
Irving, Hayward and Al Horford — All-Stars all — would perform to their superb capabilities, and that kid Jayson Tatum would be a deadly concealed offensive weapon. Others like Marcus Smart and Jaylen Brown would play their key hustle roles, though who knew Aron Baynes would be this critical?
On a night when the Celtics let some of their demons back into the building, they were, in the end, all that they had hoped and expected in a 117-108 victory over Toronto, the team that had stolen their thunder.
For one night anyway. Irving went for 27 points and 18 assists, Horford scored a season-high 24, Hayward had an ultra-efficient 18, and Tatum added half his 16 in the last quarter.
From a 106-all tie that had the Celts shaking their heads, they produced the next 15 points, a stretch during which Irving was about as cold-blooded as it gets.
It was a welcome experience for a team that had lost its previous three in unappetizing fashion.
One of the beat writers from Toronto walked up before the game and asked, in that snarky way writers do, which Celtic team was going be showing up this night.
The answer at halftime and later was easy: both.
They came onto the parquet boards in shifts, first the evil twin, then the club that was told to make no vacation plans for June. Then, again, the twin who thinks he can get by just because he looks like the talented brother who plays hard.
Then the crew that’s good enough to make it to the Finals.
The Celtics were awful to start, then found the exact stride they’ve been seeking and used it to create a 16 point lead … which they promptly squandered.
The end was the sublime kind of stuff that could draw a blindfold over what had preceded it in this game and others.
It wasn’t the same 29 seconds in, but Brad Stevens’ timeout at 7:18 of the first quarter had just as much emphasis to it as the earlier TO while trailing the Nets, 3-0, Monday. The Raptors had just run their advantage to double figures at 18-7, and Brad needed to have a chat.
“Slow to everything,” Stevens had said in Brooklyn of the Nets’ 44-point third quarter. “Slow to everything. I don’t know why that is. And we need to fix it.”
They hadn’t done so at all in the first several minutes of this one.
What’s more, the Celts were playing fast and loose with the ball. As if their defense wasn’t enough of a problem, they compounded their trouble by failing to value possession of the ball. Ten of Toronto’s first 31 points came off Celtics turnovers.
The Raptors were able to shoot 53.8 percent and go for 36 points in the opening quarter, and there were more than a few hoots raining down on the Celtics heads from dissatisfied customers who were clearly expecting more of a counterpunch after what they’d been watching the last three games.
But if it was a counterpunch they sought, there was perhaps no Celt better equipped to deliver it than Baynes, who’d missed the previous 13 games with a left hand fracture and was wearing a wrap and padding on the hand that made it appear as if it were ready to slip into a boxing glove.
While Hayward and Brown were getting the offensive glory (and, it should be noted, playing more than a little defense), their large mate was handling much of the dirty work and making the Raptors reconsider their travel plans as regards the painted area of the Garden floor.
But Baynes had his scoring moments, too. He hit a jumper from the left to give the Celts their first lead of the night, 41-40, and at that stage he was 3-for-3 from the floor and had given his club a severely needed inside presence. If he’d had any good financial sense at all, Baynes would have removed himself from the game and refused to return to the court until Danny Ainge renegotiated his contract ($5.2 million … how do you say “bargain” in Australian?).
Then with 6:44 left in the second quarter, Baynes set a pick near the top of the key. Kyle Lowry tried to go over it and emerged on the other side doubled over in pain and writhing on the floor. Baynes was called for a foul for getting a little too much hip into it, and as the Celts called their mandatory timeout for TV purposes, Lowry eventually collected himself and made it over to the Toronto bench, where he no doubt reminded himself not to walk down that street again.
Baynes was also there to help rescue the Celts for a moment after they’d seen their 16-point advantage dissolve into a three-point deficit. He collected a Marcus Smart pass out beyond the arc up top, thought about it for a good moment, then hit his first 3-point attempt since Dec. 14.
The Celtics went on to take this over at the end and state that they can be what they want. But they’ve been in this fine position before only to stumble.
There’s another game here tomorrow night, and it will be perfectly proper to ask which team will show up for that one.