BOSTON-The Celtics visited San Francisco about three months after Joe Mazzulla took over as head coach for their first meeting with the Warriors since 2022 NBA Finals. In their locker room, the players were joking as the room became noisy. Only Jaylen Brown walked by while his teammates debated their alma maters.
After Boston’s 21-5 start, no one wanted to admit that this game meant anything more. especially after Golden State beat the Celtics 123-107, the same way the Finals played out that summer. Jayson Tatum moved away from the ball, scoring 18 points in 40 minutes with two assists, Jaylen Brown scored 31 points to keep it close and Draymond Green aggressively helped take away the rim. Mazzulla shrugged, appreciating Boston’s shooting and saying he wasn’t disappointed with the result.
A less satisfied Celtics team took the floor Sunday afternoon. Golden State still had something on Boston. In December, Green’s presence broke their drive-and-kick game, making Tatum look at his worst while forcing the ball out of his hands in an overtime loss. Without Kristaps Porzingis available again, the game seemed loseable.
Instead, Boston stretched the lead to as many as 56 points in a game that had the Warriors back on their heels, then on the bench, for the entire second half. Brown scored 29 points and battled with Green while spitting out challenges for Brown to shoot and his teammates wanted to keep feeding Brown.
“When you have a creative idea and it doesn’t work and you take the ball out of the basket and they hit 10 threes in the first quarter… That’s what we used to do with teams,” Steph Curry said. “It’s a little demoralizing.”
As the Warriors tried to recover from the 140-88 loss – with Green attributing it to a trick defense made official 15 minutes before the game – the loss left Golden State reeling. Curry smiled as he discussed the defense’s plan to expose a vulnerability in Boston’s offense. Green and Steve Kerr both tried to eliminate him in the same way the Warriors have successfully done in the past, reaching the playoffs and winning the series each of the last two years despite their own issues, as a core aging. Those vulnerabilities nevertheless existed in 2022 and earlier this season when the Celtics lost. Seriousness and attention to detail had to emerge.
It became the story of Boston’s 11-game winning streak, the franchise’s longest since the 2017-18 season early in Kyrie Irving’s tenure. They don’t let teams get away with it. After a slow start, Tatum began crushing Curry and the Warriors’ guards at the rim even as the Celtics made 49 three-point attempts. Green said the shots just went in, the easiest out and the opposite of Mazzulla’s argument for 2022. In reality, Boston’s increasing attention to detail as to where the ball should go overwhelmed Golden State’s defense like it has every other team it has played against since the beginning of February.
“They stayed motivated, hungry. You always take those moments and understand that you have to get better and they did,” Curry said. “The way they play, they seem very sure of themselves, their identity and who they are. You give them credit. They came out and screamed at us from the jump…they elevated their game and you have to give them credit…they connected on both sides of the ball, they obviously play a physical style and then they know how to space and what plans they are trying to create. It looks like they have confidence no matter who has the ball in their hands. It’s an identity and a confidence in how you play every night. This is felt with certain teams… you don’t win 11 times in a row by accident.
Brown talked about the Warriors’ confusing approach to coverage, but that extreme reflected a growing problem for the Celtics’ competition in the league. Facing lineups full of playmaking, size, and shooting, there’s nowhere to hide smaller defenders. Dallas had just allowed 87% shooting to Boston players when Luka Dončić was guarding them. The Celtics can maintain this success with different lineups, with Al-Horford starting in place of Porzingis going from holding the line (-0.1 net rating) to a +4.3 which would rank in the top 10.
The Celtics’ overall net rating rose to +11.6 with this win, and they have beaten teams by an average of more than 22 points per game during this stretch, including two of their record three wins by more than 50 points. this season. Boston did it last year, but their consistency from quarter to quarter, game to game, and game to game is dazzling compared to the inconsistencies and disappointments of the ‘last year. Now, Mazzulla seems more interested in taking the lead the Celtics are building.
“The most important thing when you play these guys is the margins,” Mazzulla said. “The emotion of the three and the speed at which they play is one thing, but it comes down to the margins and the transitions. Tonight the guys did a great job at the end of the first half, we only had one turnover and they only had two offensive rebounds. In the first game we were up 17 and we didn’t close out the third quarter well, we didn’t start the fourth quarter well and it became a close game. When you play against a team like that, close games are tough…it’s the discipline of the team, their mindset and their cohesion.
Seeing becomes believing after a certain point, with Kerr and Curry part of a long line of NBA personnel to call the Celtics the best team in the league. Their flexibility to play bigger and bigger lineups while maintaining suffocating coverage on Curry and Chris Paul, while exceeding their offensive standard without Porzingis continues to erase fears that injuries could throw them off course. Seemingly tough matchups – Warriors, Heat, Knicks, etc. — over the past year, have become less difficult. A game-by-game approach, Tatum said recently, has allowed the Celtics to achieve this level of consistency.
Boston can now check the Warriors affair off its list as well, something this team has had to overcome, even though it’s increasingly unlikely the Finals will feature a rematch in 2022. Golden State has given the teams a plan on how to protect the Celtics by removing the rim; this now seems stupid.
Other teams, like Philadelphia last week, moved aggressively to eliminate threes. Boston dismantled both defenses, and while the Warriors’ pedigree is worth considering in their ability to shrug off the regular season, and while the Celtics’ past playoff woes have made it easy to refuse to pass judgment on their status as championship favorites, this team seems flat. I will go get him.
Their ability to turn all the little things into something big, some of the best and most consistent two-way production we’ve ever seen from a team, makes it harder not to dream. Jrue Holiday mentioned avoiding offensive lulls as something the Celtics, in response to Horford’s post-Knicks call for even better production, could improve on.
How was that for?
“We won the start of the third quarter, 17-10, and it’s really important to be in situations where you have a chance to have a disappointment and win it by seven. That’s why they stayed there and that’s why we practiced this,” Mazzulla said. “Not taking bad shots, not turning the ball over, not giving up plays and giving up rebounds, not getting back in transition.”
