Ja Morant, Grizzlies outlast Celtics in Marcus Smart’s return to TD Garden: 8 takeaways
Several Boston players struggled from the field in a tough loss on Saturday.
Ja Morant scored 32 points, and the Grizzlies outlasted an exhausted Celtics team in a 127-121 victory on Saturday.
Here are the takeaways.
Ja Morant threw down one of the more incredible dunks you’ll see.
In the third quarter, the Grizzlies swung the ball to the corner, and Morant exploded down the baseline. When he got to Kristaps Porzingis, Morant attempted and achieved one of the more ambitious dunks you’ll see on an NBA court – rising into the air and bringing the ball down below his waist as he flew by Porzingis, then snapping the ball back over his head and dunking it.
Morant’s athleticism was on full display against an exhausted Celtics team – he simply outran them on multiple possessions – but he would have been impressive even if the Celtics were at full strength. Morant scored 32 points and came up a rebound and an assist short of a triple-double, making 4-for-6 from 3-point range despite entering the game well below 30 percent.
“He’s a great player, and he sees different pick-and-roll coverages, and when he can get downhill, when he can get in transition, and when he’s making threes, it’s difficult,” Joe Mazzulla said. “You have to keep up with your shot making, and we just went through too many spurts where we weren’t able to do that. But also because we gave them too much in transition.”
The Grizzlies tried a new defensive strategy against Jrue Holiday.
The Grizzlies have plenty of solid defenders and are probably better equipped to deal with the Celtics straight up than a lot of teams, but rather than letting the Celtics dictate what they wanted to do all evening, the Grizzlies were proactive and opted instead to essentially concede corner 3-pointers to Jrue Holiday.
Last season, that would have been a wild decision – Holiday was the NBA’s most dangerous shooter from the corners, making an otherworldly 60 percent of his attempts.
This year, however, it was a somewhat innovative idea. Holiday was shooting just 30.7 percent from the corners entering Saturday’s game, but as a talented shooter, he was understandably tempted into taking what the Grizzlies freely offered him.
The results were ugly: Holiday shot 4-for-17 from behind the arc, and he even started hoisting some bad looks.
Eventually, the Celtics started figuring out what to do. Running their offense through Holiday prevented the Grizzlies from letting themselves off the hook, and Holiday started attacking more aggressively.
“As far as the strategy on Jrue, it’s a bold strategy,” Mazzulla said. “I mean, he’s an All-Star who shoots over 40 percent from three. I think that’s a risky one, and I thought he handled it great. […]
“I think that’s a huge gift, because now we’re going to see it again, and it’s going to be great for us. So I’m really happy that they did that for us, and I thought the teammates did a great job empowering Jrue to shoot — didn’t make them all, but we move on and I’m glad that we saw that, and it’s going to be good for us.”
For his part, Holiday said the strategy didn’t catch him off guard.
“They’re literally dropping all the way in the paint and I’m wide open,” he said. “So yeah I knew I was shooting them, but I don’t see it as an issue. Some days you shoot it well, some days you don’t. Today wasn’t the best day for me but I’ll keep shooting.”
Still, the Grizzlies showed that you don’t have to simply let the Celtics play however they want and managed to do something kind of rare: They baited a Celtics team that has steadfastly played the right way all year into a style of play that didn’t benefit them at all.
Holiday finished with 23 points on 8-for-26 shooting.
“The most important thing is having an understanding that we want Jrue to shoot every time he’s open,” Mazzulla said. “We want him to be an aggressive player, and I’m really grateful that they did that on us tonight so that we have it and we can get better.”
The Celtics battled, but they did not look like themselves.
Holiday wasn’t the only player struggling. Jayson Tatum went 1-for-10 from the field and was an abysmal 6-for-21 overall with 17 points. Derrick White continued to struggle, finishing 3-for-9 and 2-for-7 from deep. Kristaps Porzingis shot 6-for-17 and 3-for-10 from three. Payton Pritchard shot 6-for-11 and Jaylen Brown was 2-for-3, but as a team, the Celtics got up 60 3-pointers and made just 18 of them (30 percent).
The fact that the Celtics stayed as attached to the Grizzlies as they did speaks to the level of defense and professionalism that they brought to their fifth game in seven nights, but the basketball itself was pretty ugly.
Fortunately, the Celtics did not seem to suffer any serious injuries. Porzingis tweaked his ankle in the first half but played in the second. White took a knock – perhaps to his shin? – but he played until the final buzzer as well. Only Sam Hauser exited the game for good, leaving in the first half with right adductor tightness (Mazzulla said after the game that Hauser should be fine).
“It’s basketball,” Holiday said. “It’s going to happen to every single team. So we don’t really have an excuse. Just got to go out there, play. Even though sometimes games might not go your way, we always know that we’ll be in it because of the way we play and how hard we play.”
The Celtics still almost found a way to win.
Last year when they were banged up playing their fifth game in seven nights, the Celtics had to travel to Milwaukee where they suffered their worst loss of the season and benched all their starters in the second half, leading to one of the funnier nights of NBA broadcasting in recent memory as TNT cut away from its regularly scheduled game desperately trying to find a more competitive contest even though every other game going on was a blowout as well.
On Saturday, the Celtics held it together and even took a four-point lead in the fourth quarter. The Grizzlies battled back and looked like they had a stranglehold on the game, but the Celtics nearly gave themselves a chance in the final minute – trailing by four, they forced a jump ball rather than fouling, then appeared to win an out-of-bounds play off the jump between Porzingis and Jaren Jackson Jr. as Desmond Bane and Derrick White crashed into the NBC Sports Boston table, going directly into Brian Scalabrine and Drew Carter.
The Grizzlies, however, challenged the call and the officials correctly noted that the ball actually went off Derrick White. The Grizzlies got a pair of free throws and put the game on ice.
Marcus Smart returned to a standing ovation.
Smart’s return has been a little odd – last season he got his tribute video on an evening when he was in street clothes, and on Saturday, he shot just 1-for-11 in his return to the floor. After the game, he left without speaking to reporters.
But Smart – who was the heart and soul of the team for years – remains a deeply beloved figure in Boston with good reason, and when he checked into the game, he got a massive standing ovation.
Smart also defended Porzingis well on multiple possessions – a throwback to Porzingis’ Knicks days when Smart would frustrate him endlessly and tried unsuccessfully to draw a charge on Tatum (sorry Marcus, but Tatum gets superstar calls now).
If you are interested in getting emotional, we would recommend you revisit Smart’s tribute video from last February. It was a fitting farewell to a player who meant a lot to the city.
“It was weird [facing Smart],” Jaylen Brown said. “It was weird. But it was great. Marcus is a family member at this point. So to be able to see him, congratulating him on him starting his family, et cetera, off the court, is amazing. So all that stuff is good, but it’s definitely good to see him.”
Brown was one of the few Celtics who shot efficiently.
Brown had an odd game – while his teammates built a brick wall, he shot 10-for-14 from the floor, despite not taking a single shot in the first quarter. Much of that was due to the defensive attention paid to Holiday – who was 4-for-10 in the first 12 minutes – but Brown’s efficient shooting and the Celtics’ overall struggles hinted that he might have been underutilized.
Brown, however, wasn’t concerned (and he wasn’t particularly impressed with himself).
“It’s basketball. I mean, there’s no determinants of how many shots I should shoot going into every night,” he said. “Obviously, I like to be involved in actions and stuff like that, but on a team like this, I don’t mind being the distributor and setting guys up. I feel like I did that a lot, I was just too sloppy with the basketball tonight, which was not good. I’ll clean that up.”
Hauser got booed loudly.
The Celtics asked their team to play Start, Bench, Cut with Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady, and nearly everyone on the team made the wise decision (which doubles a business decision!) to pick Brady as their “Start.”
Only two players were brave enough to risk the ire of TD Garden. The first was Brown, who refused to pick but seemed to be on the verge of starting Mahomes, benching the Cal alum Rodgers and cutting Brady. The second was the Wisconsin native Hauser, who started Rodgers, benched Mahomes and cut Brady without pause.
The boos that rained down on Hauser sounded like the boos that rain down on Kyrie Irving, but he pumped his fist at the crowd unapologetically.
Give the man credit for standing on his convictions.
Finally, a break for the weary.
The Celtics now have four – four! – blessed days off to rest and recover before they take on the Pistons in Boston. After that, they’ll have two more days off before taking on the Wizards in Washington.
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