Takeaways: Jaylen Brown, Celtics continue dominant start with blowout over Wizards
The Celtics continued their dominant start to the season on Thursday, blasting the Wizards 122-102 with a huge second half and a balanced attack.
Here are the takeaways:
1. The Wizards hung tough for much of the first half, bolstered in the first quarter in particular by Jordan Poole, who started 5-for-6 from behind the arc and scored 17 points in the first 12 minutes.
But even in the early going as Poole rained 3-pointers, Thursday’s game never really felt questionable. There might not be a team in recent memory as capable as the Celtics of creating a good look on every single possession with either ball movement or obviously superior talent and mismatches, and the Wizards started to lose their grip in the second quarter as Jayson Tatum pulled the Celtics ahead by 10 at halftime.
Then in the third, the Celtics began to pull away in earnest. A 16-4 run that spanned the end of the second and the beginning of the third pushed the lead to 20, and the Celtics never let the Wizards catch their breath.
The Celtics will face teams who are better equipped to handle their offense than the Knicks, and they will certainly face teams who can play them tougher than the lowly Wizards, who will likely compete for a chance to draft Cooper Flagg.
But if there’s one thing we can probably leave in the past for good, it’s the idea that the Celtics will automatically play down to the level of an inferior opponent. There will be off nights and uncharacteristic performances here and there, but the Celtics know who they are and how they can generate their best looks, and they perform those actions on nearly every possession. The Wizards, meanwhile, probably also know precisely where they are headed this season.
2. Tatum took a seat with 2:40 remaining in the third quarter, and he never had to pull his warm-ups off again. He followed up his highly efficient 37-point opener with 25 points on 9-for-20 shooting and 3-for-11 from behind the arc. If the Wizards had kept the game a little closer, Tatum might have finished with a triple-double: He added 11 rebounds and six assists to his total.
Tatum’s percentages weren’t as gaudy as Tuesday night, but the shot still largely looked comfortable, and he spent most of the first half toying with Wizards rookie Alex Sarr, who repeatedly had to try to defend his step-back jumpers with very little success.
Tatum is moving like there’s a weight off his shoulders through two games. The game looks effortless – he’s gliding through pick-and-rolls, trusting his teammates, attacking the rim with power and confidence, and shooting at a high level.
A reporter asked Tatum after the game if winning MVP matters to him, and Tatum gave a guarded (but fair) answer.
“As a kid you set a lot of goals for yourself, and I’ve been very fortunate to check off a lot of boxes of things that I wanted to accomplish, things that my favorite players accomplished,” Tatum said. “Saying that MVP is important to me is not taking away from the success of our team. Every guy that has ever won MVP has been on a championship contending team. If you’re an MVP, you’re dominating, you’re efficient, you’re playing the right way and you’re impacting winning.
“So you can do both. Championship is the most important, but being the best version of yourself along the way is important as well.”
Tatum is absolutely correct: His status as his team’s superstar means that his own self-actualization benefits his team just as much as himself.
3. Tatum has now played the entire first quarter in back-to-back games before taking a four-to-five minute rest to start the second.
An interesting note from statistician Dick Lipe about that rotation: Last season the Celtics were 13-1 in games when Tatum played the entire first quarter.
4. Jaylen Brown scored 27 points and recorded four steals. When Tatum cooled off slightly in the second half, Brown was more than able to pick up the slack with several bully-ball buckets in the paint, and his two 3-pointers to start the fourth quarter then punctuated a dominant stretch that put the final 12 minutes of the game on rails.
Brown’s offseason work in the weight room showed in several of his finishes. He powered straight through Kyle Kuzma for a well-controlled floater on his second basket, he scored two layups to end the half through tough contests in transition, and he offered one of the more exaggerated “too little” celebrations you’ll ever see after he scored a post-up and-one through contact from Jordan Poole.
5. Payton Pritchard shot 1-for-10 in the opener, but if you were concerned that his 3-point shot deserted him, rest assured that he will be fine: He finished 5-for-10 from deep with 15 points on Thursday.
Those numbers would have been even better if he had a split second longer to shoot at the end of the third quarter: Much to the delight of Celtics fans, Pritchard took an inbounds pass at three-quarter court and hoisted it the length of the floor, off the glass and in.
The officials didn’t need to review whether he got it off or not because he only had 0.2 seconds to shoot, which isn’t long enough to gather. Still, Pritchard still reigns supreme as the king of the full-court shot.
6. Xavier Tillman’s 3-point percentage remains worth tracking purely from a schematic perspective, and he went 2-for-3 from deep including one from the top of the key.
7. Baylor Scheierman scored his first NBA basket – a layup in transition in the fourth quarter when he and the rest of the Celtics’ bench mob took over with the game well in hand. Scheierman also nearly banked in a very deep 3-pointer, and he finished with four points after smoking a potential and-one attempt but making both free throws.
8. Derrick White finished with 19 points on 4-for-7 shooting from 3-point range and was a staggering +33 in the box score.
It’s too early to draw conclusions, but keep an eye on White’s shooting out of the pick-and-roll. His impressive rise as a 3-point shooter has been well documented, but he looks even more confident than last year doing it off the bounce.
9. The Celtics dug deep into their big rotation, giving 20 minutes to Al Horford, 16 to Luke Kornet and 13 to Neemias Queta.
Of the three, Queta actually popped the most – 12 points on 5-for-7 shooting and seven rebounds in his limited stint. The Celtics are at their best when everyone can space the floor, but Queta’s ability to give them roughly 80 percent of the vertical spacing Robert Williams offered makes him an intriguing change of pace.
10. The Celtics will now travel to Detroit to take on the Pistons on Saturday before they return to TD Garden for Monday’s showdown against the Bucks.
We will have more takeaways later this evening.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com