Celtics
Porzingis scored a team-high 24 points in Boston’s win.
Kristaps Porzingis returned and led the Celtics in scoring in his first game back from illness, and they finished their two-game road trip with a second straight victory, beating the Nets 115-113.
Here are the takeaways.
Kristaps Porzingis looked like himself.
The best possible outcome from Kristaps Porzingis’s eight-game absence — which was really more like a 10 game absence, given how clearly unhealthy he was when the Celtics took on the Pistons — was that he would return and look like himself, given that the playoffs are approaching.
After all, eight games off for Porzingis means roughly 240 fewer regular-season minutes in which he could rest before the games that really matter, and the Celtics are well positioned to make a run even though he has played in just 33 of their 68 games to date.
And, of course, it was pretty helpful that he came back ready to play. Porzingis, playing with fresh legs that participants in Friday’s showdown in Miami that ended roughly 21 hours before Saturday’s game tipped off didn’t have, scored 24 points to lead the team. He made just one of his seven 3-point attempts and certainly looked winded in the opening minutes, but he dominated the shorthanded Nets in the paint and even hammered down this one-handed poster as part of a fourth-quarter surge that gave the Celtics just enough distance to claim the win.
Having Porzingis back is, of course, enormous for the Celtics for a lot of reasons — he gives them another scoring element with a diverse skill set, and he is the team’s best rim deterrent (with apologies to both Luke Kornet and Derrick White).
But while the Celtics maintain that they aren’t looking ahead to the playoffs, it’s difficult for those of us who watch them on a nightly basis to stay rooted in Brooklyn for a relatively unremarkable win not to think about the implications of a healthy Porzingis over the course of the next few months.
“I thought he was great,” Joe Mazzulla said. “He looked in good form. I thought his defensive activity was good. The start of that fourth quarter, I thought he put us in a really great position to win and executed down the stretch on both ends, so it was great to have him back.”
Porzingis was more sick than he has ever been.
Porzingis wants fans to know that he was “extremely, extremely” frustrated with his absence too.
After Saturday’s game, Porzingis told reporters he had an upper respiratory infection that turned into bronchitis.
“I hadn’t been this sick probably ever in my life,” Porzingis said. “For a week, really laying at home trying to recover, and after that I still had lingering fatigue.”
Porzingis added that he tried to come back several times, and he was pushing hard to play before the Lakers game. He went through a hard workout the day before, which didn’t yield the results he wanted.
“The crash I had was, like, historic,” he said. “The next day, I couldn’t ever get out of bed to go for shootaround.”
Porzingis went to the arena but couldn’t get himself on the floor and realized quickly that he wasn’t going to be helpful, which was his metric for when he wanted to get back on the floor.
“It was frustrating for me,” Porzingis said. “I’m just illness out, illness out, like, ‘Come on, this guy can’t play through some illness?’ Even I would think that.
“So I just wanted to let people know that I was really dealing with something. I would never sit out for some cough or something. If I’m out with illness, it has to be something a little bit to where I can’t really play to help the team.”
Payton Pritchard made NBA history.
With his fourth 3-pointer of Saturday’s game, Payton Pritchard notched himself in NBA history — breaking the record for most 3-pointers off the bench, set by Wayne Ellington seven years ago, with 219. Pritchard went on to hit another, and you can safely bet that he will set the mark quite a bit higher still with just under a month — and plenty of games that will require a heavy dose of bench scoring — remaining in the regular season.
Pritchard caught fire and was an important part of Saturday’s win — 22 points on 7-for-11 shooting, six rebounds, three assists and a pair of steals. His 3-point shooting helped push the Celtics to a big first-half lead, and he made three out of four free throws in the final minute which actually did end up mattering (more on that in a minute).
Pritchard’s rise from a spotty rotation guard who requested a trade because he wanted to hoop into a frontrunner for Sixth Man of the Year has been well documented, but it is no less remarkable for having been so thoroughly remarked upon. In an ideal world, working hard and being a star in your role would always lift you as high as Pritchard has lifted himself as an NBA player.
“Any time you hold a record in the NBA, regardless of whatever it is, it’s special,” Tatum told reporters. “So I’m happy for him. He works really, really hard, everybody knows that. And his ability to stretch the floor and kind of take over in stretches sometimes, it’s really helped us, and obviously he helped us win a championship, so we’re very, very lucky to have him.”
The Celtics nearly blew it (kind of).
With 2:44 remaining in the fourth quarter, Payton Pritchard hit a 3-pointer that pushed the Celtics’ lead to 112-101, and a win felt all but assured.
For the next 1:15, the Celtics went scoreless, but all the Nets managed was a single two-pointer by Day’Ron Sharpe, and even when Cam Johnson drilled a 3-pointer with 1:26 left, the lead felt relatively secure. The Celtics ran out the shot clock on the other end, and the Nets had 1:02 left to mount a seven-point comeback.
They nearly did it. In just five seconds, Ziaire Williams got the ball up the floor and drilled a 3-pointer. Jrue Holiday missed a floater on the other end but grabbed an offensive rebound, and after the Celtics called a timeout, Tatum missed a 3-pointer which trimmed the clock down to 25 seconds, and once again, the Nets raced up the floor again and got a quick basket — a tough floater by Keon Johnson that left the Nets down just two with 15 seconds remaining.
Pritchard made two free throws, but — stop us if you’ve heard this one — the Nets raced up the floor and got another 3-pointer, this time a deep one by Cam Johnson with five seconds remaining. They fouled quickly, sending Pritchard to the line where he made the first and missed the second, which forced the Nets — who did not have a timeout — into a desperate run toward their hoop which ended with Johnson hoisting a shot after the buzzer.
Watching the game, it never felt like the Celtics were going to lose until they nearly did, and it looked like the Celtics felt the same way, which — we would assume — is why the Nets were able to make their fierce comeback.
Jaylen Brown sat the second half with back spasms.
After missing Friday’s win over the Heat, Jaylen Brown returned on Saturday, but he left the game midway through the third quarter and did not return. Brown sat out with a knee issue on Friday, but he was held out of the rest of Saturday’s game with back spasms.
Before he left, Brown gifted Neemias Queta this easy dunk with a nifty assist.
Brown seems to have picked up a couple of knocks in recent weeks. With just two games in the next seven games (both of which are against teams that are tanking to the absolute best of their ability), the Celtics do have an opportunity to let him put his feet up for a while if need be.
Jrue Holiday the distributor.
Holiday had a really impressive game as a distributor, recording a season-high 12 assists with Derrick White on the sideline.
Holiday picked apart the Nets around the rim — eight of his 12 assists found players for baskets eight feet from the rim or closer. In the early going, he took advantage of a scrambled Nets defense that kept doubling him for reasons that didn’t entirely make sense, and he beat the Nets into the paint several times, which led to a pair of dunks by Porzingis and one by Queta. His final two assists were both to Pritchard, who canned 3-pointers.
Much is made of all the 3-point shooters the Celtics have spread all over the floor, but one thing that slides a little under the radar is how many ball-handlers they have who can find those shooters and break down defenses, creating the 2-on-1s that are the lifeblood of the offense when it is at its best. Holiday is a seasoned NBA lead guard who has taken a smaller role over the last two years but who remains deeply capable of doing all of the things that made him an All-Star in his final season with the Bucks.
“He can do so many different things,” Mazzulla said. “He’s hitting timely corner threes for us, timely offensive rebounds, I think he had the tip to Sam at the end, and then his ability to play make in the pick-and-roll. Just another guy that can give us a lot of stuff.”
A lackluster shooting night.
The Celtics, who shot 13-for-38 from three, are now 17-12 when they shoot 35 percent or less from three, and they are now 7-4 when they shoot fewer than 40 3-pointers in a game.
That is to say: They still win more often than they lose in those situations, because they are still a really good basketball team whether or not they hoist triples at a historic pace, but they are notably better when they take and make them at a higher clip.
A slow week ahead.
As the Celtics wrap up their difficult three-games-in-four-nights stretch, they can look ahead to some respite: Just two games next week, starting with Tuesday’s rematch against the Nets at TD Garden. The Celtics will then hit the road, heading to Utah for a Friday evening showdown against the Jazz that kicks off a four-game-in-six-nights road trip.
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