Celts check bucket list
Shoot lights out to avenge early defeat
Brad Stevens’ thoughts were swirling by the end of the first quarter. The more Milwaukee blitzed Kyrie Irving off pick-and-rolls, the more the Celtics point guard and his co-playmaker, Al Horford, found open shooters.
Jayson Tatum, the NBA’s leading 3-point shooter at 51.3 percent, was 4-for-4 from downtown in the first quarter. The Celtics built an eight-point lead.
“(The) first half was about as good as we’ve played offensively all year,” said the Celtics coach.
But Irving knows how the other shoe is going to drop after the Celtics’ 111100 win over Milwaukee last night — their third straight victory and fifth in their last six.
“I know Brad will say that, and (then) he’ll watch film and we’ll have more things we can get better at,” said the Celtics point guard. “So that’s just the beautiful thing about having Brad be able to see what he sees out there firsthand, and then be able to go back on film and rewatch it tomorrow. We just consistently get better. It’s encouraging. I think we’ve made some strides. Our defense took a step back and now we’re just trying to find that balance and just being able to sustain it for 40 minutes.”
The Celtics have talked often about how they felt back on Oct. 18, when they were 0-2 following a loss to Milwaukee. They had lost Gordon Hayward for the season a night earlier, and in a sense they were still emotionally reeling.
But a loss like that isn’t forgotten easily, as evidenced by this win.
Irving led a 55.1 percent effort from the field with 32 points on 13-for-24 shooting. No performance was as stirring as Tatum’s 17-point, 5-for-6 night for the simple reason that the rookie made Milwaukee pay horribly for its overattention on Irving. Tatum didn’t take a shot in the second half.
The Celtics had to deal with a different kind of pressure by then, including a second-half eruption by Giannis Antetokounmpo, who scored 22 of his 40 points after the break, including a 16-point third quarter.
Though they were pushed defensively by Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton (19 points) and Eric Bledsoe (18), the Celtics overcame the threat with some great offensive balance of their own.
Horford, 8-for-10 from the floor for 20 points, just missed a triple-double with nine rebounds and eight assists.
“We’re very different,” Horford said of the changes that have occurred since that opening-week loss to the Bucks.
“That opening game here for us was very emotional with all the Gordon stuff going on,” he said. “And after a tough loss in Cleveland, there’s just a lot. They got the best of us that night but I felt like, as a group, we’ve grown tremendously in very little time and feel like we have a lot more to do, a lot more growing to do.
“I think coach really did a great job putting us in position (last night) to give outlets to Kyrie and he really simplified the offense. We just followed his plan. We really just got the ball, got it to the other side, and still Kyrie continued to somehow end up with 32 points. It speaks a lot about him. Also, them doubling him allowed us to make plays and make the right play. He just draws so much attention.”
Horford benefitted personally from the Bucks’ continued choice to overload on Irving.
The Celtics opened the fourth with a whittleddown 88-81 lead, and fought hard to keep that cushion, with the teams swapping scoring possessions down to the six-minute mark.
That’s when the exchange turned to dunks, with Antetokounmpo answering a Horford tip dunk with a dunk over Marcus Smart. But Horford not only converted an alleyoop pass from Smart, again with a dunk, but also answered Antetokounmpo’s subsequent miss with another dunking hook-up with Smart for a 102-90 lead.
Middleton cut the Celtics’ lead inside 10 again (102-94) with 3:48 left, and after four combined empty possessions, Jaylen Brown tucked a layup under Middleton, only for Antetokounmpo to answer with a layup, followed by a Bledsoe free throw.
But Irving’s floater pushed the Celtics’ edge back up to 106-97, Milwaukee botched the next possession, and Irving buried the dagger with a 3-pointer over Bledsoe for an airtight 108-97 lead.