Jayson Tatum drops 34 to lead Celtics in gritty win over Bucks: 10 takeaways
A little over a quarter of the way through the season, Tatum looks very much like an MVP candidate.
Jayson Tatum put together a masterful performance and the Celtics claimed a 111-105 win over the Bucks on Friday, improving to 19-4 this season.
Here are the takeaways.
Jayson Tatum picked on Brook Lopez.
Lopez is an important defender for the Bucks – a towering figure in the paint who discourages any foray to the rim with great success.
So rather than having offensive players drive straight at him, the Celtics – especially late – adjusted by forcing him to come out and defend Tatum on the perimeter by bringing Lopez’s defensive assignment out to set a screen.
That allowed Tatum to drive at the slower Lopez, and while it didn’t always result in a basket, it helped keep the paint open.
“At halftime, we saw what the spacing was, and it was just, ‘Hey, when you have one of the best rim protectors away from the rim, here’s what’s available, and here’s who’s going to overhelp, and here’s what we can get,’” Joe Mazzulla said. “And so the guys did a tremendous job just kind of executing the offensive coverages in the game plan.”
Tatum, meanwhile, came up big in a big game yet again – 34 points on 12-for-20 shooting (4-for-10 from three) to go with 10 rebounds and five assists. Two of his assists were similar looking dimes out of the pick-and-roll, wrapping around defenders to find a cutting teammate.
“I mean, nobody can guard him in the league,” Jrue Holiday said. “He’s a tough guard.”
A little over a quarter of the way through the season, Tatum looks very much like an MVP candidate, and playing against a fellow candidate in Giannis Antetokounmpo, he finished with more points on more efficient shooting, more assists and a nice win.
A dubious season-first.
The Celtics had not gone an entire quarter without a 3-pointer yet this season, but they went 0-for-12 in the second, which was part of a 17-for-53 performance from behind the arc for the game. Payton Pritchard was uncharacteristically off (0-for-2) and Derrick White shot 0-for-8 from deep, continuing his shooting woes after a 4-for-15 overall performance against the Pistons.
Al Horford, meanwhile, was just 2-for-7, but he hit the biggest shot of the game late in the fourth quarter when the ball found him in transition for an open triple above the break that pushed the Celtics’ lead to two possessions.
Sam Hauser, Jayson Tatum and Jrue Holiday, meanwhile, gave the Celtics enough shooting overall, combining to go 12-for-25 from behind the arc.
As has been the case for most of the season, when the Celtics play the math game correctly, they win even if they don’t shoot well.
Jrue Holiday had a revenge game.
Does a big game against an old team count as a revenge team if you seem pretty content in the new situation?
Either way, Holiday scored 20 points on 7-for-14 shooting against the Bucks and dished out six assists. His final bucket was his biggest one: A driving floater as the shot clock expired that pushed the Celtics’ lead to five with 25.6 seconds remaining.
“[I] still want to win,” Holiday said. “In between those lines, when it’s tipoff to the buzzer, I want to win.
“I love them. It’s great seeing them. But every time I play them, and probably even more so because they’re like my brothers. So I want to whoop their ass every time. And they know that, too. They feel the same way about me. I think it’s just about being competitors. To be able to switch it on and off, I don’t know. It’s just like, ‘Hey, bro, good to see you.’ Once the game starts, it’s like, ‘Nah, we not friends anymore.'”
The last time these teams met, the case for the Bucks deeply regretting the Damian Lillard trade seemed stark – the Celtics attacked Lillard repeatedly, putting the Bucks in uncomfortable situations, and Holiday looked great, especially on the defensive end.
On Friday, Lillard had a much better game – 31 points on 12-for-25 shooting. Still, Holiday provided the Celtics with defense and plenty of offensive firepower on a night when the rest of the Celtics’ back court couldn’t find the range. In our view, the point stands.
Jaylen Brown and Giannis Antetokounmpo: Still not BFFs
Brown and Antetokounmpo got into it with each other the last time the Celtics and Bucks met – Antetokounmpo hit Brown with an elbow, and when he went to shake Brown’s hand to apologize, he pulled his hand back and pretended to smooth his hair with a grin. That prompted Brown to declare that Antetokounmpo “is a child” after the game.
On Friday, the fireworks were slightly less pronounced, but in the third quarter, Brown scored a scoop layup over Antetokounmpo and held his palm to the floor in the often inflammatory “too small” gesture.
That started a minor fracas, as Antetokounmpo hit Brown with an elbow on his way past. Brown, in return, pointed in Antetokounmpo’s face, and the officials got Brown with a technical foul.
“I thought the elbow to the face kind of unlocked Jaylen a little bit,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I thought the technical was tremendous by Jaylen, and I thought from there on in, it just brought out an edge in us, and we were able to feed off that.”
Antetokounmpo’s sneaky elbow may have gone unnoticed by the officials, but as Richard Jefferson pointed out on the ESPN broadcast: If you hit someone with the “too small,” you should be prepared to get hit with an elbow in return.
The Bucks picked on Neemias Queta.
At the start of the fourth quarter, the Celtics looked like they might put together a huge stretch, starting off the period with seven straight points including a four-point play by Jayson Tatum. That turned a four-point deficit at the start of the period into a three-point lead.
But the Bucks kept taking and re-taking the lead by picking on the Celtics defensively. With Antetokounmpo out, Damian Lillard called Neemias Queta up into the pick-and-roll repeatedly, and he took advantage of the Celtics’ willingness to switch by going directly at the big man. When Antetokounmpo returned, he picked on Sam Hauser.
The Celtics have a lot of really good individual defenders, and presumably, Mazzulla wasn’t particularly interested in showing everything in his defensive arsenal in an early December game. If Porzingis had been playing, Queta in particular probably wouldn’t have been on the floor (although he might not have made an enormous difference schematically).
Still, the Celtics are hard to pick on defensively, and it was interesting to see a team give them a dose of their own medicine.
An oddly chaotic final possession.
The Bucks had a lot of trouble fouling the Celtics on the final two possessions of the game when they needed to commit a foul to extend the game.
First AJ Green missed Jrue Holiday in the back court and allowed the Celtics guard to bleed five or six seconds before he was fouled.
Then with 10 seconds left, Derrick White picked off a pass from Antetokounmpo to Khris Middleton, and White scampered down the court to the corner. Green came flying in to foul, but White flicked a pass to Horford, who laid it in as Green reversed course to foul him.
Horford’s wife really wanted Antetokounmpo to miss a free throw.
Amelia Vega – Horford’s wife – didn’t seem to feel that TD Garden was doing its part to make sure her husband’s rival missed a free throw.
“I really enjoy it for my wife to be there rooting me on, giving me that little extra energy, it’s good,” Horford said. “And then having our kids there, I just enjoy seeing them. Just being there and being able to experience this type of life. It reminds me of when I was younger.
“It was different, but watching my dad a little bit play in [the Dominican Republic] and stuff like that, and I look at them, and it’s kind of like the same thing. So for me, it’s pretty special.”
The Celtics and Bucks are done for the season.
The Celtics wrap up their season series against the Bucks less than two months into the season with a tidy 3-0 record.
What have we learned about the two teams?
Al Horford is still a menace against Antetokounmpo – so much so that Antetokounmpo, who was having a relatively solid game, hoisted a 3-pointer in the final two minutes rather than driving at him (Horford, of course, responded by making a 3-pointer, and Antetokounmpo told reporters afterward that he would “shoot it again”).
Lillard is a pick-and-roll threat, and if the Bucks and Celtics meet in the playoffs, the Bucks will need to make sure that he gives them a lot more on the offensive end than the Celtics take from him on the defensive end. That equation needs to go far more in Milwaukee’s favor than it has in the three regular-season games.
The Bucks don’t really have anyone for Jayson Tatum, but at this stage in his career, it’s unclear how many teams in the NBA have anyone for Tatum.
Jrue Holiday is a menace.
How much the Bucks can jell with Middleton returning to the lineup will be important.
The advantage seems to be fully on the Celtics’ side, and most Bucks fans would probably admit that in an honest moment.
“We take that right now we’re in the game with them, but we haven’t beaten them and we do believe we have a big stretch that we’re going to get better,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers told reporters afterward. “We’re going to get a lot better and they will too a little bit, but we will a lot and so yeah, we hope to play them again in the playoffs in the late rounds and we’ll see how it goes.
“But right now they’re the champs and until someone beats them, they’re the champs.”
Happy birthday to Deuce.
As a fellow father of a 7-year-old, I hope the Tatums had a great day.
“I know I wasn’t on the Jumbotron at a Celtics game,” Tatum quipped to reporters afterward. “I think for me and him, it’s special that we share these moments together. Deuce was born December 6, 2017. That was a month and a half into my rookie year. It’s crazy that now he’s seven and how much time has passed.
“But it’s been really special. We’ve grown up here together in Boston. We’ve shared a lot of cool moments and special moments here at the Garden. He was excited about the game today. He liked being on the Jumbotron, so it was a pretty cool moment for a seven-year-old.”
The return of an old friend.
Marcus Smart will be back in Boston on Saturday evening with a Grizzlies team that has been playing great recently, and the Celtics will need to ready themselves for another tough game after the most grueling week of their season so far.
“I’m thrilled to see Smart tomorrow,” Tatum said. “You all know how much he means to this city, to this franchise. Ultimate Celtic, he’ll always be a Celtic for life. I had played with him for six years – I didn’t envision a time where I wouldn’t be on his team. So, if he does play tomorrow, it’ll be a little weird, but I’ll probably go out there and tackle the s— out of him or something.
“But I’m excited to see him. I know the fans are going to be thrilled to have Smart back in the building. So it’s going to be a special moment.”
Thanks to the NBA Cup, the Celtics will finally get some time off afterward, playing just two games in 11 days.
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