Celtics crush Hornets sans Hayward, 116-86
Tatum leads all Celts scorers with 22, six in double figures
Though the Celtics still lack Tristan Thompson, perhaps not for long, they are at their healthiest in a long, inconsistent season.
With Evan Fournier showing his seven-trey performance against Houston Friday was not a fluke, and Rob Williams shooting 16-for-18 over his last two games, the Celtics are finally getting an idea of their newfound balance.
Jayson Tatum’s 22-point performance led the Celtics in a 11686 win over Charlotte that included three other players with 16 points or more and another two with 12. They shot 39% from downtown (21-for-54) and attached 29 assists to 43 baskets in one of their finest nights of ball movement this season.
They have 64 assists over their last two games, and for Brad Stevens, who has placed a premium on cutting and passing over isocentric basketball in recent weeks, the goal may finally be taking some form.
“They make it a little bit tougher because they switch so much,” the Celtics coach said of Charlotte. “You saw a couple times when we held the ball too long, we got blocked, we got forced into difficult shots.
“But when we moved it side to side, when we didn’t settle, then that was good,” said Stevens. “So the last two games moving the ball has been good, I think what we’ve really been trying to emphasize — more cutting, more
off-the-ball cuts, more movement in the last four weeks or so. We’ve had some growing pains along the way, but for the most part, it’s been pretty good offensively. So hopefully we can play defense like we did tonight more often.”
The injury-wracked Hornets (no Gordon Hayward, LaMelo Ball or Malik Monk) started the day fourth in the Eastern Conference playoff standings, a game-and-a half ahead of the eighth-seeded Celtics, and by the end of the game the Celtics had closed the gap on teams directly in front of them.
Though still in eighth, they were now tied with the 25-25 Knicks, and within a half-game of Atlanta and the Hornets, who dropped to fifth. The Celtics have a chance to move on another rival when they play the Knicks Wednesday in the Garden.
“I feel like this was a big win, keeping the pace we’re on, keeping it rolling,” said Williams. “We have to have a lot more wins to be where we want to be.”
Stevens, though, will hold off on where a win
like this puts his team. He simply wants to see better basketball.
“I was hard on them after the Dallas game, but I think we’ve been that way all year,” said the Celtics coach. “I think we have understood our situation all year, which was we haven’t been whole at all.
“And today you saw a team that now has a couple of their best players out and it affects them. Charlotte will learn how to
maximize that, but it takes the wind out of your sails and you’ve gotta find a way to just kind of navigate that. We didn’t do it perfect, but we did navigate it to the point where we’re not too far away from where we need to be on both ends of the floor. Our record hopefully will improve if we can maintain that health, but at the end of the day our players have all talked about — we’ve all talked about constantly
— everything we want to do is still in front of us. So no reason to get out of sorts, no reason to ride the roller coaster of if we lose the sky is falling vs. if we win, like, talking about how great Romeo (Langford) was in his 12 minutes. We’re just here trying to get better. And that’s what we’re going to try to keep doing. And hopefully we stay that way. And if we do, we might be tough to beat.”