Celtics rally past Thunder
OKLAHOMA CITY -The Celtics were the same doctors of disappointment they’ve been all through this season’s first week and a half. The Celtics were pretty much everything that’s been expected of them. All in the same night.
Fortunately for their emotional well-being, the latter was able to overcome the former. It took two stirring comebacks, but the Celtics were finally able to secure a 101-95 victory over the still winless Thunder Thursday night. In a matchup of early season underachievers relative to their expectations, the Bostonians scored 16 of the game’s last 17 points to save some face after a 2-2 start. The Thunder, now 0-4, managed to have a little more sand kicked in theirs. After trailing by as many as 16 and getting back into the fray, the Celts found themselves down by nine with a little more than four minutes left. They proceeded to score the next eight points and, after Steven Adams hit a free throw to edge the Thunder in front by two, tie the game on a Kyrie Irving drive with 56 seconds left. Russell Westbrook then missed a 3-pointer and Marcus Morris (19 of his 21 points in the second half ) hit one with 27.9 seconds to go to pretty much put it away. It was quite the turnabout, as the same Celts who went 0-for-11 on 3-pointers and scored an anemic 34 points in the first half put 40 on the board in the third quarter. The first half was a clobbering of the highest order. The Thunder outrebounded the Celts, 35-21, and had a 14-4 edge in second-chance points on the way to a 16point lead on the scoreboard that mattered. And while the C’s may have been peeved that they didn’t get to the free throw line until 9:40 of the second quarter -- and that on a defensive 3-second call on OKC -- the fact is they weren’t going to the hoop often enough or often enough to warrant more attempts. And when they did get to the line, they made just six of 11, missing the five consecutively. But most glaring were the 11 bricks from out in the sticks. When they returned from the break, however, it was as if the Celts had fixed the coordinates on their GPS. Gordon Hayward took a feed from Jayson Tatum and drilled a trifecta from the left corner 13 seconds into the new quarter. They went on to hit nine of their first 13 from beyond the arc, with Al Horford making three straight on consecutive possessions in a span of 42 seconds. Then Morris hit two more. And when Terry Rozier stole a Hamidou Diallo pass and turned it into a transition drive, the Celtics were even for the first time since 2-2. And they got their first lead when Morris closed out the third period scoring with an inside hoop to make it 7473. The C’s were ahead, 81-79, after six lead changes in the first three and a half minutes of the last quarter. But then they missed a couple of free throws, and the Thunder began to creep away. Then the Celtics reeled them back in. The night couldn’t have begun much worse for the Celts. It took just 2:39 for the Thunder to outscore them, 11-2 -- and for Stevens to call a timeout while his calm demeanor belied his displeasure with the early proceedings. And it didn’t get better -not for a while anyway. The C’s hit just one of their first seven shots, adding a turnover for bad measure. They went 3:40 without a point until a Tatum jumper at 7:27 and produced just four points in the game’s first 6:06. The Celtics did get it going later in the frame when the clubs went to their benches, and Tatum came back in for a fairly spectacular transition dunk on Paul George with 5.5 seconds left. But true to form -- and, again, to Stevens’ chagrin -- they allowed the Thunder to race up the floor and get a buzzer beating pull-up from old Atlanta antagonist Dennis Schroder for a 22-16 lead. It was that kind of night for the Celts. Until the second half.