The last meeting between the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons didn’t turn out in the former’s favor, barnburner though it was. And more so than after most losses, Kyrie Irving and other key Celtics expressed a strong desire to even the score against Andre Drummond, Tobias Harris and the rest of the Motor City boys. This Sunday afternoon was their chance, and despite some kickback toward the end, Boston got theirs with a grind-earned win.
THE GAME FLOW
This season’s Pistons do not mess around. Their record, 7 games behind the first-place Celtics, doesn’t reflect the full breadth of their talent. So they came out with Avery Bradley and Tobias Harris gunning relentlessly. Irving struck back quickly, though, and Al Horford, eager to put memories of Dec. 8’s subpar performance against the San Antonio Spurs behind him, drove hard to the basket as the final part of deftly handled pick-and-roll maneuvers. Critically, the whole squad also used strong team defense to keep the Detroit bigs largely in check.
Celtics fans’ hearts briefly sprang up in their throats as Al appeared to sustain an ankle injury and headed to the locker room. But he quickly returned from the tunnel to the bench, and got back on court with about 1:30 left in the first quarter. Boston built their lead to a comfortable double-digit margin before Detroit bench stalwarts Ish Smith and Anthony Tolliver scored some clutch treys, but still had a respectable 8-point advantage at Q1’s end.
Given what happened in the first contest between these Pistons and Celtics, it would be imperative to neutralize Drummond. To Boston’s credit, they mostly did that in the first and second frames of the game—at about 8:25, the big fella had only 4 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 foul, 1 turnover and 0 points on two shot attempts. The Detroit bench, unfortunately for our boys, picked up some of the slack, particularly Smith as the second-unit facilitator, and pulled off a 12-4 run that brought Detroit within one possession of a tie.
Hoping to buffer the lead a bit, Brad Stevens sent Shane Larkin alongside Kyrie and the newly goggled Jaylen Brown in to make a quick small-ball lineup, with only Jayson Tatum and Aron Baynes for size. It didn’t work, as the Pistons locked in hard on D and kept Boston scoreless for nearly three minutes before Marcus Smart got a post bucket by combat-muscling the hell out of Reggie Jackson, just after the two-minute warning. Tatum made another basket after that to bring the lead to 7, but a Reggie Jackson flop and subsequent technical-foul-earning bitch session killed the game’s whole momentum, leaving us with the Celtics ahead 44-37 at the half.
It got weird in the third quarter. Detroit lost the ability to shoot, more or less, with their percentage falling to 32 percent from the field and 33 percent from deep. The Pistons morphed into an awkward, shapeless mass of a basketball team, losing all the cohesion of movement they’d had in the first half. Boston was ready to take advantage and did, with Irving, Horford, Jaylen and SMARF handling the bulk of the offensive load and came to a lead as high as 18 at times.
Drummond grew increasingly agitated by his own ineffectiveness—whether he wasn’t getting touches or was hesitant to shoot is unclear, but either way he only had one more shot attempt in Q3—and elicited a tech for his expressive consternation. He got his usual double-digit rebounds, but the Celtics’ tactics to immobilize him worked well on the other end of the floor, with Drummond’s former teammate Baynes playing a big part in those efforts while Horford spent more time dealing with Harris. Pistons bench contributors like Ish, Tolliver and rookie Luke Kennard were that squad’s only real bright spot moving into the game’s final quarter, with Boston comfortably ahead 73-59 after a thrilling last-second trey by Terry Rozier.
Most of the Celtics offense in the 4th came from the bench, and there wasn’t much of it in that frame’s initial minutes. Fortunately, the Pistons didn’t have much either in that span, despite Tolliver’s best efforts. (He should get some sort of Most Underappreciated Veteran award, I swear.) And then the next seven minutes happened, and Detroit scored 12 unanswered points thanks almost entirely to Harris, in a run that also included Drummond’s first field goal of the game. And the Pistons were within five.
What the hell happened to that 18-point cushion? I want that back. Seriously though: The answer to “What happened” is not so much what the Pistons did right but what they forced the Celtics to do wrong, and Avery Bradley is integral to that, doing major damage to Kyrie’s offensive prowess.
Clutch threes ended up being key to the ultimate result of this game. Horford and Tatum made them for the Celtics, and Harris didn’t make his for the Pistons, despite how proficient he’d been from deep most of the contest. Add to that how thoroughly the Cs outrebounded the Pistons (how often have we typed that sentence in the past few years), and the fellas in green paid Detroit back with a 91-81 win.
HOT S**T: Horford’s bounce-back game, the aforementioned outrebounding of Detroit, Tatum not scoring a ton but hitting when it counted, solid work from the bench, strong team defense.
NOT IT: Avery is a fantastic on-ball/one-to-one defender, but Kyrie knows that, and I was kind of hoping he’d be acclimated to it and adjust, but oh well.
GREEN FIRE:
Jaylen with a wonderfully brutal dunk on Tobias Harris (although Harris doesn’t even try to contest, so I guess he isn’t quite dunked on):
With authority 💪 https://t.co/N4RH9zQ6hK
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) December 10, 2017
T-Ro for THREE:
Terry Rozier with the rainbow 3 to beat the 3rd Quarter buzzer! pic.twitter.com/lkS2Vt3ZHh
— NBA (@NBA) December 10, 2017
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