Celtics hold off Bucks in a game that left Joe Mazzulla with no takeaways: 8 takeaways
The top two Eastern Conference teams met in Boston, and the Celtics sent the No. 2 Bucks packing after a 122-119 win.
The Celtics took and nearly blew a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter but held on to beat the Giannis-less Bucks 122-119 on Wednesday.
Here are the takeaways.
1. We can’t speak for Joe Mazzulla here, who seems to delight in lessons learned from moments that drive fans insane, and we can’t speak for the players involved, but the Celtics’ victory — which pushed them 11 games ahead of the second-place Bucks in the Eastern Conference — managed to become one of the most ambiguous games of the year.
Celtics fans might argue that a win is a win, which is technically correct, even though boasting about a win over the Bucks without Giannis Antetokounmpo is kind of like inheriting money and then bragging that you paid off your house.
Bucks fans might argue that Damian Lillard played like a superstar, which is correct, except that the Celtics’ best answer for him — Milwaukee’s old friend Jrue Holiday — was also sidelined.
Bucks fans might argue that they nearly won without Antetokounmpo, which is true, but the Celtics did win even though some of their heaviest anti-Bucks artillery — Kristaps Porzingis — misfired and hit just 6-for-16 from the floor and 0-for-5 from 3-point range.
Bucks fans might recall their January win in which they so thoroughly dominated the Celtics that the starters were pulled at halftime. Celtics fans might retort that the Bucks, again, are 11 games behind in the standings.
People who don’t like the Celtics might point to their near-collapse, which is valid except that the Celtics actually did rally in the clutch where they have previously folded, and they rode a big end-of-game stretch by the oft-mocked Jayson Tatum to a win.
Suffice to say that you can take away whatever you want from Wednesday’s game. So what stuck out to Mazzulla?
“Nothing,” he said shortly. “Can’t take anything from the game.”
Wait, nothing at all?
“I mean you can, but I don’t want to overthink,” he said. “Nothing is guaranteed in life. We may see them [in the playoffs], they may see us, we may not. You never know what’s going to happen.”
2. Tatum had an odd game — he poured in 23 points in the first half, but the Bucks held him scoreless until late in the fourth quarter, when he worked his way to the free-throw line as the game felt like it was about to get away. Then he beat Malik Beasley off the dribble for a layup, got back to the free-throw line, and eventually iced the game with a pair of free throws, finishing with eight points in the fourth quarter and 31 points overall despite shooting 1-for-6 in the second half.
Tatum didn’t attempt a shot in the third quarter, which he called an “outlier.”
“I feel like we got some good looks, maybe trying to be in a position where to get other guys going, right?” Tatum said. “I knew I had it going in the first half, so at times picking spots to be or try to be more of a facilitator. Sometimes it’s just how the rhythm of the game goes.”
Mazzulla praised Tatum’s patience.
“I thought there were a couple plays that didn’t go our way, but I thought Jayson’s poise down the stretch of getting to the free-throw line, getting to the spot he wanted was a key to the game,” Mazzulla said.
3. Jaylen Brown spent much of the game defending Lillard. The Bucks star scored a game-high 32 points on 11-for-21 shooting, but Brown stopped him on a crucial possession in the final minute and hounded him throughout the game.
“It’s powerful, what that does for our team, how much better it makes us seeing him take the challenge of guarding the best guard on the other team, picking him up full court, chasing him around all night,” Tatum said. “It has an impact on the rest of the team and really gives everybody else no excuses.”
Brown said taking on the opposing team’s best player is “fun,” comparing it to a chess match.
“I just want to be able to not just take on those matchups, but take them on with strategy, with intelligence, and help our team win,” Brown said. “Not just to be all about me, but just make sure that I can affect our offense, and I can also affect the game on defense.”
4. Wednesday’s game got chippy on a few occasions. Patrick Beverely hit Luke Kornet with a “too small” gesture that drew Payton Pritchard’s ire (“Definitely took it a little personal,” Pritchard said afterward). The normally peaceable Derrick White, meanwhile, took a shot to the face from Bobby Portis, and the two exchanged words afterward, which continued down the floor when Beverley took up Portis’s case.
“I feel like that was kind of a playoff game,” Pritchard said. “It had the atmosphere like it, the energy in the building.”
5. Pritchard had another excellent game: 19 points on 7-for-11 shooting (5-for-8 from three) to go with six rebounds and three assists. He scored 13 of those points in his first 12 minutes on the floor, including a huge stretch at the start of the second quarter that earned him a standing ovation from the TD Garden crowd.
Mazzulla declined to put a ceiling on Pritchard’s potential when asked after the game.
“He’s a pretty complete player from the standpoint of I trust his defense, he can defend at a high level, he can rebound defensively and offensively, he can push the pace, he can shoot,” Mazzulla said. “He’s just continuing to get better and better all the time, and that’s just the player he is.”
It’s worth remembering that Pritchard is older than Tatum, so he’s not a particularly young prospect. Still, he is excelling in a larger role, and his ability to fill whatever need the Celtics have on a given night takes on an outsized importance on a star-powered team hoping to win a title.
6. As a team, the Celtics shot 5-for-18 in the fourth quarter. The Bucks played a zone defense that appeared to mess with the Celtics, although Mazzulla pointed out that they got a number of solid looks that didn’t fall.
“It just magnifies some of the shots that you miss where it’s like, ‘Oh, they are missing because they are playing zone,’” Mazzulla said. “If you miss those against man, it’s like, ‘Oh, that was good offense,’ but if you miss it against zone, it’s like, ‘Oh, the zone messed them up.’ So you just have to work through a couple of the possessions. I thought the guys did that.”
7. Maybe the most disappointing aspect of Antetokounmpo missing the game was that the Celtics didn’t get a look at how Xavier Tillman will defend him. Grant Williams made himself a significant amount of money by being a powerfully built young man who could stand in front of Antetokounmpo and absorb a big hit. Tillman is similarly powerful. We might have to wait until the playoffs to see how he would hold up.
Or we might not. Again, as Mazzulla put it, nothing is guaranteed in life, and you never know what is going to happen.
8. The Celtics continue their busy week by taking on the Pistons in Detroit on Friday, followed by the Bulls on Saturday in Chicago. Their next six games are on the road.
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