Both the Boston Celtics and Washington Wizards just came off big first-round road wins and dove into the Eastern Conference Semifinals fire. Although exhaustion likely played a role in mistakes made by both teams, the Cs outlasted shooting barrages and low-post brutality with highlight-reel performances by their headlining stars, to take an auspicious win and lead in the series. This one’s gonna get weird, folks.
THE GAME FLOW
The first second-round series in the Brad Stevens Era did…not start great. All the Wizards’ weapons were displayed early–the shooting of Otto Porter, the muscle of Marcin Gortat and Markieff Morris and John Wall’s superlative playmaking–to fuel a brutal 16-0 run in the first four minutes of Q1. It didn’t help that the Celtics missed every open shot they got, and they got a few, but the Wiz’s clear size advantage disrupted the Cs’ defensive prowess.
Boston didn’t hit a field goal until somewhere around 7:15, off a Marcus Smart steal and assist that became an Avery Bradley transition layup. This lit a fire that Isaiah Thomas followed with consecutive threes. NBA basketball is a game of runs. Good as Washington’s offense is, they weren’t going to make 10 consecutive shots again. I’d like to believe that Otto Porter’s accidental shoulder-bump that popped a tooth from I.T.’s mouth also prompted some of the Cs’ awakening too. But it wasn’t enough, in no small part because Brad Stevens had no ready answer to Gortat.
The second quarter was something of a different story, as the Celtics caught the good-shooting bug that infected the Wizards in Q1. Mostly I.T. and Kelly Olynyk, but Smart and Jae Crowder also chipped in and Terry Rozier’s rebounding gave heft to the Boston reserves. Markieff Morris’s unfortunate injury, falling atop Al Horford’s foot and rolling his ankle, was also a major setback for D.C.
Neither of these squads is well-equipped to defend the other, so the ultimate result of this would be contingent on whose run lasted the longest and if Boston’s superior depth and versatility would outdo Washington’s excellent front line. (And who got hit with the most bad calls–both squads were on the bad side of shit officiating in various instances.) But even with all the fouls and weirdness and occasional sniping, it was a less exciting Q2, ending with D.C. barely ahead, 64-59.
While the Celtics started the game’s second half with better defense, particularly in transition, the team had reentered the “slump” portion of their seesawing offense for the first two minutes, aside from a Horford dunk and I.T. triple. Fortunately, the Wizards also weren’t hitting much considering how frequently they popped off. At 7:02, Gortat’s block of a Bradley layup ended up a Bradley offensive rebound, then a cross-court run, then a series of bumps and blocks and tip attempts that finally resulted in a Crowder triple and Boston’s first lead. The relentlessness of both teams in this sequence exemplifies what I feel the whole series will be like.
Let me break down another example of this game’s wildness: Wall turns the ball over trying to pass out of an FT timeout that Bradley Beal got from a pretty weak but ultimately legit foul call on Avery Bradley, Horford intercepting. Al blows his own pass attempt, chucking it into Gortat’s hands, who barrels right into Smart’s waiting, stealing hands and gets it back up the court and over to A.B. for a triple. After another series of made jumpers and threes from Horford and Isaiah in the final 3 minutes of Q3 that outdid Washington’s continual reliance on long 2s and layups–it’s almost like Randy Wittman still coaches this team, just in a Scott Brooks skinsuit–it began to look like it was Boston’s game to lose.
Plenty of game left to be played, of course. And the Cs had to remember the 22-5 lead of the game’s initial minutes–sloppy though they may be, the Wiz are capable of doing that at any point, all things being equal. But as the Boston lead ballooned from 5 points to 15, Washington’s best two-way weapon–Gortat–grew exhausted from having played nearly the entire game with only halftime rest, and Boston’s defense finally took hold and kept Washington with only 16 points in the quarter to Boston’s 36.
Nothing is easy, of course, so the Wizards got 8 unanswered points to begin the 4th quarter and managed to draw 5 team fouls out of Boston off of 3 legit calls. (Let me say this now and take advantage of this being a fan blog, not a newspaper: Fuck Scott Foster.) That said, the foul on Bojan Bogdanovic’s made three was completely the Cs’ fault, so I’m not claiming conspiracy, merely tight-assed stupidity in certain moments. Bogdanovic made up for his bad first half with a few more made shots and smart contact-drawing. But the Cs held their mud and Horford played a major part of that on the glass and as a shooter.
I questioned Stevens’s decision to bring Jaylen Brown in for the final 5 minutes of a game whose conclusion remained uncertain–particularly with Beal rediscovering his three-ball–but he made a 3 and got a key assist on a Crowder triple within about 45 seconds, and then drew Beal into a loose-ball foul after a clutch rebound. No, I’m not about to say Brown unlocked anything; he’s still a rookie and makes rookie errors. But the Horford-Bradley-Brown-Isaiah-Crowder lineup was remarkably effective, rebuilding the double-digit lead at the quarter’s start. (It’s a variation on the starting lineup that had Gerald Green in Brown’s spot and didn’t work.) Washington never quit but had little left in the tank, and the bench ran out the clock to bring in the 123-111 victory.
Olynyk is a decent bench shooter whose limitations annoy me and whom I won’t miss when he leaves. He is also an irresponsible defender, has high-profile instances of his mistakes injuring others and made some of those bad plays today, some of which weren’t called in D.C. favor as they should’ve been. But. Certain segments of NBA Twitter–those positing that he’s A. Bill Laimbeer reincarnated and B. that most if not all defenses of him are Because He A Whiteboy–are stupid and irresponsible, based in stereotypes of Celtics fandom that haven’t held water for fucking decades. News for y’all: Racist sports fans in Boston either don’t watch NBA and spend time stroking it to hockey, or are only pretending to because the squad made the postseason. /endrant
Our Red’s Army video man KWAPT captured one of the sequences I broke down above:
What's that? You say you want more crazy sequences? #Celtics ➡️ pic.twitter.com/7dVVD6kdAg
— KWAPT (@KWAPT) April 30, 2017
“When you saw no footprints…it was then that I carried you.” – Isaiah Thomas, probably
IT nails his second consecutive trey to get TD Garden on its feet! https://t.co/wnVcaVqD8W
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) April 30, 2017
THE GRID
Isaiah Thomas: 33 points and 9 assists, plus 1 rebound and only 2 turnovers (his counterpart Wall had 8; yikes)
Al Horford: 21 points, 9 boards, 10 dimes, 1 block and also only 2 turnovers. Made many of the most crucial shots for the Cs. So all you “he ain’t a max player” people? Never talk to me or my large adult Dominican cousin ever again.
Jae Crowder: Going 6 for 8 on threes en route to 24 points is the headlining stat, but his 6 rebounds on both ends, 1 assist, 0 turnovers, game-high +26 and lockdown defense are no joke either.
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