On paper, it was Boston’s first two-game losing streak in two months.
In reality, it was proof that the Celtics can hang with the NBA’s best, even at far less than full strength.
Two days after giving Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs a scare in San Antonio — they trailed by one with 6:38 to go before fading late in a 125-116 loss — the C’s nearly upset the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder on their home floor Thursday night, losing 104-102 on a pair of Chet Holmgren free throws with 0.8 seconds remaining.
Boston played the former without Payton Pritchard, Nikola Vucevic and Jaylen Brown (who was ejected late in a stellar first half for arguing with officials), and the latter without Jayson Tatum, Derrick White and Vucevic.
Add in last Sunday’s 109-98 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, which the Celtics led by 20-plus before a late Cavs rally, and it was an all-around encouraging road trip for Joe Mazzulla’s squad despite the 1-2 result.
“Effort was good,” Mazzulla told reporters after Thursday’s loss. “It’s effort, toughness, execution. I thought our effort and toughness was great. When you play two great teams like that, obviously every possession matters, so a couple of possessions that didn’t go our way, it’s the difference in the game. But I thought we played very well, and credit to the guys. And now we have the possessions that we know we have to get better at.”
At 43-23, the Celtics still sit second in the Eastern Conference standings with 16 games remaining. They rank third in net rating and point differential, trailing the Thunder and Detroit Pistons in both, and look the part of a team that’s now the betting favorite to represent the East in the NBA Finals.
As Boston heads home to play six of its next seven games at TD Garden — first up: a Saturday evening matchup against the actively tanking Washington Wizards (6 p.m.) — here are three additional takeaways from its three-game gauntlet:
Big-time bench
Only three Celtics finished Thursday’s last-second loss with positive plus/minus marks. All three were bench players: Ron Harper Jr. (plus-15), Jordan Walsh (plus-12) and Luka Garza (plus-9). And Hugo Gonzalez’s minus-3 was better than any Boston starter.
The Celtics being able to field a difference-making second unit — against arguably the NBA’s deepest team — while playing without three rotation players underscored one of the main reasons for their success this season: the major leaps taken by players who weren’t NBA regulars a year ago.
Harper, a 25-year-old wing on a two-way contract, has scored 33 of his 106 career points in the last two games. Walsh, who’d been out of the rotation since Tatum’s return, played his best game in weeks against OKC. The Celtics have outscored opponents by 17 points with Garza on the court since Vucevic, the team’s top trade deadline pickup, fractured his ring finger last Friday — an injury that will sideline him for at least the next two weeks.
Gonzalez had 11 points, two offensive rebounds, two steals and a block Thursday night, holding the Thunder’s supporting cast to 1-for-8 shooting. (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander went 3-for-4 against the rookie, but no Celtic could contain the reigning NBA MVP in his 13-for-18, 35-point, nine-assist showing.)
During one stretch late in the first quarter, the Celtics sent out a lineup of Baylor Scheierman, Gonzalez, Harper, Walsh and Garza, all of whom were either deep bench players or not in the NBA last season. Scheierman has started 14 of Boston’s last 19 games — he comes off the bench when Tatum is available — and the second-year pro not looked out of place in that role despite playing with a fractured thumb.
“We’ve just got some young wolves, man,” Brown told reporters postgame, via NBC Sports Boston. “We play inspired basketball. We come out every night and we compete, regardless of who’s on the floor. We’re not afraid of nobody, and we play together and play as a team.”
Tatum progress report
Overall, it’s been a promising return to action for Tatum, who started and played 27 minutes in each of his first three games back from Achilles surgery before sitting out Thursday night. Far from perfect, but promising, considering he went nearly 10 months without playing real, competitive basketball.
Tatum has upped his scoring output in each game (15 points against Dallas in his season debut, 20 against Cleveland, 24 against San Antonio), though each featured prolonged dry spells. He’s still working to dial in his shot, converting just 39.3% of his field-goal attempts and 29.0% of his 3-pointers thus far.
The 12 rebounds and seven assists he tallied against the Mavericks were more than he totaled in the next two games combined (eight and four, respectively), but he’s held up well on the defensive end. Opponents have shot 9-for-28 (32.1%) and 1-for-8 from deep (12.5%) with Tatum as the closest defender, per NBA player tracking.
Tatum typically averages around 36 minutes per game, so it will be interesting to see how Mazzulla builds up his workload over the final five weeks of the regular season.
“You just trust the people around him,” the Celtics head coach said in a pregame interview with Amazon Prime sideline reporter Cassidy Hubbarth. “You trust the sports science team. You trust his training. You trust his work ethic and everything that helped him get to this point. You just trust those things, and the most important thing is he continues to get healthy and continues to stay healthy as we continue to get better as a team.”
Brown the facilitator
In a trend that began before Tatum’s comeback, Brown’s assist numbers have spiked of late.
The Celtics’ top scorer has dished out at least seven assists in each of his last seven games and nine of his last 10. He hit that mark even in his abbreviated outing against San Antonio, assisting on seven made baskets by five different teammates in just 15 minutes of floor time.
The last Celtics player to log seven straight seven-assist games was Rajon Rondo way back in 2014.
Also, though Brown griped about Gilgeous-Alexander’s foul-baiting after Thursday’s game — and has railed all season against what he views as unfair officiating directed at him and the Celtics — he got to the line nearly twice as often as SGA, going 13-for-14 on foul shots to offset his 10-for-25 shooting from the field. Gilgeous-Alexander attempted eight free throws.