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Shai Gilgeous-Alexander goes off against ice-cold Celtics, leads Thunder to 15th straight win: 8 takeaways
The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Celtics 105-92 in Oklahoma on Sunday.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder dominated the second half on Sunday, pulling away to beat the Celtics 105-92 and extend their winning streak to 15 games.
Here are the takeaways.
1. SGA and the Thunder are the real deal.
The Celtics shot poorly from 3-point range the entire evening, and they were particularly bad in the second half. They also turned the ball over a ton, which led to a 13-3 advantage in fast-break points for the Thunder.
The Thunder may have caught a bit of a break from the Celtics’ 3-point shooting; they generated a fair number of good looks and couldn’t knock them down, which makes their offense a lot easier to defend.
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But OKC did plenty of damage defensively as well. They are fast, aggressive, and strong as a unit, and they don’t have any obvious weak links like so many of the Celtics’ other rivals. The Celtics attacked Cason Wallace with Kristaps Porzingis a few times, taking advantage of OKC’s willingness to switch, and Jaylen Brown was effective in the first half getting downhill before the Thunder switched Lu Dort onto him and turned Brown over repeatedly.
On the other end, meanwhile, Gilgeous-Alexander looked every bit the MVP candidate he is billed as. The Celtics threw every defender they had at him, and Gilgeous-Alexander simply maneuvered his way around each one. At one point, Gilgeous-Alexander even appeared to pick on Jrue Holiday, which — for obvious reasons — isn’t a sentence we write often in this space. Defensively, Gilgeous-Alexander was very solid, and he even recorded an incredible chase-down block on Tatum late in the fourth. He finished with a game-high 33 points (11-for-23 shooting) and finished with 11 rebounds and six assists.
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Presumably, the next time these teams meet, the Celtics will be a little better. The next time these teams meet, however, the Thunder might have Chet Holmgren and Alex Caruso back in the lineup alongside their superstar guard.
Sunday’s game was strange and probably wasn’t indicative of how these teams would match up in the playoffs. But, it certainly hammered home that the Thunder are a genuine threat to the Celtics’ hopes of a repeat if both teams are still alive in June.
2. The Thunder dominated the hustle stats.
The Celtics generated a lot of good looks that didn’t fall, but if you want some cause for concern, here’s some: The Thunder contested 19 3-point shots, which is notably higher than usual. In other words, while 3-point defense is relatively difficult to quantify and probably boils down to shooting variance more than anything else, OKC did seem to be more aggressive (and, of course, the Celtics take more 3-pointers than your average team). Cason Wallace contested five 3-pointers, while Dort challenged four. Isaiah Hartenstein, matched up with Kristaps Porzingis, got a hand up for three.
The Thunder also finished with 12 deflections, which resulted in 11 steals. The Celtics recorded seven deflections and six steals.
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3. The Celtics came apart at the seams (and went ice cold).
The Celtics shot 9-for-46 from 3-point range on Sunday, an icy 19.6 percent from deep which was their worst performance from three of the season.
They also turned the ball over 16 times, including three each by Jaylen Brown and Derrick White and four by Kristaps Porzingis.
They scored 35 points in the first quarter, 30 in the second, and just 27 in the entire second half.
And as the game came down to the wire, the Celtics’ defense, which seemed so stalwart in the first half as they maintained their shape and flew around the floor, started to show cracks. Lu Dort buried three triples in the fourth quarter, the first two of which were a pair of daggers (and the third of which was salt in the wound). The Celtics, who continued hoisting 3-pointers long after it was clear that Sunday was not going to be their evening from behind the arc, also appeared to let a combination of the officiating and the Thunder’s aggressive defense get under their skin.
“Once they turned it up a little bit in the second half, we played stupid, and we gave some possessions away, and once you start giving up possessions like [that], it’s downhill for us,” Porzingis said. “The rest of the time was battling uphill. Once they made that run, we were up four or something like that, but the crowd was already into it, and they hit one or two more threes, and the momentum already shifted pretty heavily, and we just kept battling uphill, and the momentum was on their side.
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“So it’s not something unsolvable, but it’s just ugly second half from us offensively.”
The Thunder visit the Celtics on March 12 for a rematch. If both teams are relatively healthy, expect a bloodbath of a regular-season game.
4. Joe Mazzulla hated the spacing.
Speaking to reporters after the game, Mazzulla hammered home his point that the Celtics’ spacing failed them in the second half.
“It was a number of things,” Mazzulla said. “They had 17 points off turnovers in the second half. That’s a product of poor spacing, poor physicality on the ball, and poor screening.
“They are a team that fights for matchups, and I thought we did a great job of that in the first half, and those 17 points off turnovers I think were the difference maker down the stretch.”
Mazzulla added that the Celtics lacked “intentionality” in their spacing and screening, which was costly.
“It’s just something you’ve got to commit to every possession as you’re playing a game and going through it and looking to process each possession,” he said. “You’ve just got to fight for great spacing every possession.”
“I think some of those situations we’ve got to look at and just give each other more space, more freedom, just more space,” Porzingis said. “We just need space, and just be smart when we have opportunities, and work for each other. I don’t think we played selfish or anything like that, but we just didn’t play good.”
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5. Jaylen Brown got to the rim a lot in the first half but was scoreless in the second.
It might get lost in the Celtics’ second-half failures offensively, but they actually put together one of their better performances of the season against a team selling out to stop its 3-pointers in the first half. The Celtics took 52 percent of their shots in the paint, and they scored 32 points.
Brown was integral to that strategy, scoring 21 points on 8-for-12 shooting. He sliced past OKC defenders, finished through contact and showed some nice touch on a couple of tough shots around the rim.
Brown, like the rest of the Celtics, fell off enormously in the second half. He didn’t score the rest of the way (and as a team, the Celtics managed just eight more points in the paint).
“They moved to Lu Dort to him – that had a little bit to do with it,” Mazzulla said. “But I think there’s times where, again, we have to fight for our spacing, to give guys opportunities to score. Obviously if that happens, that’s on me, that’s on everybody, but we just have to be better offensively.”
For 24 minutes on Sunday, however, Brown and the Celtics looked like they had the answer for critics who said they couldn’t score against defenses focused on the 3-point line.
6. Tatum had a scary fall.
As the game heated up in the third quarter, players started flying around after the ball. Tatum got into the action with a hustle play racing after a loose ball.
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Tatum went shoulder to shoulder with Jalen Williams as the pair pursued the ball, and Tatum was knocked to the floor in a scary position.
It wasn’t entirely clear what Tatum hurt on the play — he came up favoring his wrist and shoulder, and he appeared to land on the ball, which can be disproportionately painful. In any case, he was down for several concerning moments before he was helped to his feet and slowly made his way to the bench.
Tatum returned to the game and seemed to be okay. He was moving well, and he made a deep 3-pointer late.
7. The Celtics remember when they were like the Thunder.
The Celtics finally claimed a title last year, cementing themselves as an all-time team, but prior to that, they were in a situation very similar to the Thunder: young and hungry, trying hard to prove themselves against the NBA’s elite.
Like the Thunder, the Celtics needed some time to marinate in the NBA’s brutal proving ground before they were ready to become champions.
And like the Thunder this year, who have a historic net rating and are now on a massive winning streak, there were signs that things might be different when the Celtics finally did break through.
“When we were those guys, we were looking for those matchups, so it makes sense to be on the other side of it now,” Brown said. “And it’s a long journey. We’re navigating the ups and downs of the season. We have to be better and continue to grow in spots and focus on us.
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“But OKC is rolling right now.”
8. A final game on the road trip.
The Celtics will look to wrap up their road trip with a 3-1 record when they travel to Denver on Tuesday to take on Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets. The showdown tips off at 10 p.m.
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