Celtics inflict worst-case scenario on Warriors despite Tatum woes

The Boston Celtics basically inflicted a worst-case, nightmare scenario on the Warriors in Game 1 of the NBA Finals.

Jayson Tatum scored 12 points. He shot 3 for 17, and couldn't hit a 3 to save his life. He was a complete non-factor shooting the basketball, as the Warriors basically kept the Celtics' star from matching scores with Steph Curry (34 points).

And yet, much to the Warriors' dismay, it meant nothing, as the Celtics won going away in front of Golden State's home crowd at Chase Center.

Talk about having to go back to the drawing board, the Warriors basically had no answer for everyone else, as the Celtics enjoyed a 120-108 win in the opener.

Thanks in part to a spectacular fourth quarter led by Jaylen Brown, who set the tone by attacking the basket, along with Al Horford (26 points), Derrick White (21 points) and Marcus Smart (18 points), who threw up one dagger 3 after another, the Celtics were able to start off in the driver's seat of this best-of-7 series.

If that wasn't bad enough, it's bound to get worse for the Warriors.

Tatum isn't going to be cold shooting the entire series, no matter how well they defend him. And if everyone else continues to make shots as they did during Game 1 largely from Tatum feeds, the Warriors are going to have a tough time preventing the Celtics from capturing Banner 18.

That's how good of a first impression Boston made in the come-from-behind win, erasing a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit with a 40-16 run.

“You give up 40 in the fourth and the other team makes 21 3s, it's going to be tough to win,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said following the loss.

It's going to be tough for the Warriors to win if Tatum also joins the crowd, whether it's in Game 2 or 3 or 4, or all of the above. And it will remain tough even if Tatum is kept at bay, and the Celtics still have three players scoring 20 or more points, as they did in Game 1.

Tatum, who was awarded the inaugural Larry Bird Trophy as the MVP of the Eastern Conference Finals, did not score a single point in the fourth quarter.

No matter, Horford (6 for 8 from distance), Smart (4 of 7) and White (5 for 8) picked up the slack with 15 of the team's 21 3-pointers.

Tatum's reaction to humbling the Warriors with a crushing 40-point fourth?

“Ecstatic, right? Forty points in the fourth quarter? JB played big. Al, Payton (Pritchard), D-White, those guys made big shots, timely shots as well. And we won, right?” he said. “I had a bad shooting night. I just tried to impact the game in other ways. We're in the championship. We're in the Finals. All I was worried about was trying to get a win, and we did. That's all that matters at this point.

And it's not that Tatum's bad night shooting completely eliminated him from making an impact. His career-high 13 assists in itself was “a game-changer” as Pritchard described following the game.

Curry said some Celtics had “career nights” shooting the ball, and that was the difference in the game.

Well, that's typically how the Celtics have been rolling during the playoffs, along with their run toward the postseason. Someone else has managed to step up and deliver whether Tatum, Brown, Horford or whoever had a rough shooting night.

Said Warriors forward Draymond Green: “You've got to give them credit. They made the shots when they needed to make them.”