Jayson Tatum drops 38 as Celtics run away from Jazz with late run: 8 takeaways
The Celtics capped off a successful three-game road trip with a 123-107 victory Tuesday.
The short-handed Celtics pulled away from the Jazz in the fourth quarter on Tuesday, claiming their third win in a row to close their road trip on a 123-107 high note.
Here are the takeaways.
1. The Celtics’ available stars looked great, but we’re going to start with Luke Kornet, who clearly was workshopping this joke and deserves his flowers.
First, “Oh, were you guys doing an interview? I didn’t notice,” is a perfectly Luke Kornet way to interrupt a postgame spot.
Second, “I haven’t seen a white kill jazz like that since Ryan Gosling in ‘La La Land,’” is objectively a good joke. To quote comedian Bill Burr (talking about a very different set up): “There is zero fat on that joke! You take one word out, it doesn’t work.”
So credit to a White Jazz killer (who we will get to shortly), credit to Kornet for a solid game with both Al Horford and Kristaps Porzingis sidelined as the team’s starting center (12 points, nine rebounds, four offensive, six assists which matched his high-water mark in Boston, and a blocked shot), and credit to Kornet for crafting a sturdy punchline seemingly in large part for his own amusement.
2. White really was excellent – 24 points, including 7-for-11 shooting from 3-point range. His seven made 3-pointers tied the second-highest total of his career, including the Celtics’ loss to the Warriors in December as well as a 2021 performance in San Antonio. He hit a career-high eight last season against the Hornets.
A big bounce-back game was somewhat inevitable for White, who was 1-for-14 in his last five games prior to Tuesday’s explosion. He is shooting his highest percentage from deep (40.2 percent) since his rookie season on 6.5 attempts per game.
3. Jayson Tatum’s night started when, early in the first quarter on a fast break, he bumped Jazz guard Keyonte George back with his shoulder and threw down a one-handed dunk on Brice Sensabaugh.
That set the tone for a big Tatum evening. He scored in all of the ways you expect Tatum to score at his best: Four 3-pointers (4-for-10 from deep), a variety of floaters, post-ups and finger rolls, and 8-for-8 shooting at the free throw line en route to 38 points. Kris Dunn appeared to briefly give him trouble, but Tatum posted Dunn up and scored right over him for his final basket of the night.
4. The Celtics led by as many as 17 twice in the third, but the Jazz whittled the lead down to two with 36 seconds remaining in the quarter on a floater by Jordan Clarkson, and the Celtics looked like they might let the game slip given the circumstances.
Then Tatum raced down the court and buried a 2-for-1 3-pointer (he thought he was fouled), and Jrue Holiday stripped the ball from Clarkson and scored. That flurry gave the Celtics some breathing room going into the fourth.
Then they put together a dominant stretch. From Clarkson’s floater late in the third to the 5:34 mark in the fourth when he drove and rolled in a layup, the Jazz didn’t score. The Celtics, meanwhile, built a 20-0 run that pushed their lead to 22. The Jazz cut into that a bit and didn’t let the game get further out of hand, but they never seriously challenged again.
Much of the damage, especially defensively, was done by the bench unit
“I didn’t say this enough in the locker room, but the fact that the last couple games, everybody’s stepping up, it’s just kind of what we’ve been trying to build, where we have an environment and a locker room and a culture of it doesn’t matter who is in, guys are ready to play at all times,” Joe Mazzulla told reporters. “… The professionalism that those guys have, they are just constantly ready. I have no hesitancy putting any one of those guys in because of the work they do, and it reflected over these two games.”
5. Perhaps the biggest reason the Jazz rallied in the third quarter: The Celtics cooled off drastically from 3-point range. After shooting 14-for-25 from deep in the first half, they went 3-for-12 in the third quarter (as well as the fourth). The Jazz, meanwhile, shot 7-for-15 in the second half and 5-for-10 in the third as they made their run.
6. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Celtics had not used a Xavier Tillman/Luke Kornet double-big lineup prior to Tuesday’s game (which probably isn’t an enormous surprise). Against the Jazz, Kornet was +10, while Tillman – in 26 minutes – was +14, going 3-for-5 from the floor en route to seven points and eight rebounds.
Notably, Tillman was also 1-for-1 from 3-point range and 2-for-2 if you count shots with a foot on the line as 3-pointers at heart.
7. The Bucks got crushed by the Kings, which left the Celtics 9.5 games clear in the Eastern Conference. Milwaukee has 16 games remaining on its schedule, while the 51-win Celtics have 17.
8. The Celtics return home for a game against the Suns on Thursday. On the one hand, the Celtics will play their third game in four nights after a road trip, which suggests a schedule loss is possible. On the other hand, they might have some rested reinforcements, and they beat the Suns on the road with important contributions from their bench less than a week ago.
The game tips off at 7:30 p.m.
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