Celtics handle Warriors
Tatum returns from injury with 20-point performance
Groins are tricky injuries, as Brad Stevens noted when explaining why the process of bringing Jayson Tatum back had to be gradual.
It was fitting, then, that on the night that he was announced for the first time as an NBA All-Star, the Celtics forward was able to shake off some early rust in the Celtics’ 119-104 win over Golden State.
Despite shooting 1-for-5 from downtown, the Celtics forward still rounded out his night with a 20-point performance that had lots of support, including another wildly efficient night from Gordon Hayward with a team-high 25 points on 8-for15 shooting.
Marcus Smart stepped up in the closer’s role, bagging all five of his 3-pointers in the second half en route to a 21-point performance. Overall the Celtics shot 15-for-35 from downtown, including nine second-half bombs.
Hayward finished the third quarter with some big numbers — 25 points on 8-for-14 shooting, three treys, 6-for-6 free-throw shooting and seven rebounds. In addition to three third-quarter treys from Smart, Hayward’s work was primarily responsible for the Celtics’ 91-80 lead.
Tatum, back in form, scored the Celtics’ first six points of the fourth, before Kemba Walker buried an uptop 3-pointer with 7:44 left for a 100-84 lead.
The task was now to keep the Warriors sufficiently back — a goal that received considerable traction when Smart buried his fourth trey, all in the second half, for a 105-87 lead that matched the Celtics’ biggest edge of the night.
No. 5 — and the Celtics’ 14th three overall — came with five minutes left for a 108-90 edge that Daniel Theis almost immediately followed up with another bomb.
The Celtics rolled out to a fairly uncontested 60-50 first-half lead, with Hayward leading the way with 17 points, and another 14 from Jaylen Brown. Tatum’s first half, after a three-game absence, was understandably slow-starting, though he finished strong in a seven-point burst.
And when Brown opened the third quarter with a 3-pointer, Tatum hit from downtown the next time down, and followed that with a pair of free throws for a 68-52 lead.
By the time Tatum drove for a 72-54 lead with 8:38 left in the third, he and Brown had combined for all 12 Celtics points in the quarter.
The Celtics led by as many as 16 points (77-61) on a Smart bucket, and when the Warriors started to chip away at the margin, cutting the Celtics lead down to nine points (77-68), Smart hit two 3-pointers over a 23second span, and added a third two minutes later on the end of an 11-4 run for an 88-72 lead.
Though the Warriors closed out the third with an 8-3 run, Hayward’s 3-pointer in the midst of that flurry was pivotal in the Celtics closing out the quarter with a 91-80 lead.
Tatum missed the only shot he attempted in his first six-minute stint on the floor, and the team got rolling with the first-time All-Star on the bench.
The Celtics’ first big move was a 14-2 run, triggered by a Hayward jumper and good for a 25-17 lead.
The Celtics slowly worked on their stake from there, finishing the first quarter with a 29-22 lead.
Hayward was off to another hot start, this time with a 15-point first quarter on 4-for-6 shooting.
The Celtics then flexed some muscle, and opened the second quarter with a 15-5 run, taking a 44-27 lead on Walker’s transition layup.
The Warriors countered with a 10-0 burst that included a pair of 3-pointers, only for the Celtics to hit back just as hard, this time with an 8-2 run. And when DeAngelo Russell scored every
point in an 8-2 burst, Walker drove the court to hit a 4-footer at the buzzer for a 60-50 halftime lead.