Boston Celtics
“Usually when you’re in moments like that, you take poor shots,” Joe Mazzulla said afterward. “We didn’t do that. We kept fighting for good looks, the next best look. I thought that kind of kept the momentum going a bit.”
Jaylen Brown during the Celtics’ win over the Heat. AP Photo/Lynne Sladky
Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum were masterful, and the Celtics were red-hot in a bounce-back 147-129 win over the Heat on Wednesday.
Here are the takeaways.
Jaylen Brown was overwhelming
Jaylen Brown made it immediately clear — the first time he touched the ball, on the first possession of the game — that the Heat had absolutely nothing for him.
On the Celtics’ first offensive play, Brown pump-faked Andrew Wiggins roughly 15 feet in the air, drove into the paint, and tossed in a little floater.
On their second offensive play, Brown drove straight into Pelle Larsson, muscled past the Swedish guard and Bam Adebayo, and finished a nifty reverse layup.
On the next possession, Brown stared down Andrew Wiggins, set himself, and then buried a 3-pointer directly in Wiggins’ face.
From that point on, it was a rout. Brown scored 20 in the first quarter and rolled the rest of the way to 43 for the game. On the penultimate possession, Brown canned a 3-pointer. That forced the Heat to double him the next time down, and Brown — who looked like he had a bit of a hankering for one more basket — dished to Derrick White, who ran into acres of space and tossed in an easy floater off the glass.
All things considered, the Heat didn’t play a particularly bad game, at least on the offensive end. The problem for Miami is the same problem that almost every NBA team runs into when they play the Celtics at something close to full strength: It’s very difficult to stop Jaylen Brown when you can barely spare your best defender to guard him.
Andrew Wiggins spent a lot of time on Jayson Tatum, which left Davion Mitchell on Brown. To get Mitchell (or Wiggins) off Brown, all the Celtics had to do was run a pick-and-roll with whoever was being covered by one of Miami’s less accomplished defenders, and they created an advantage. When Miami went to a zone, the Celtics simply picked it apart with passing.
But like so much of the Celtics’ success this season, Wednesday’s win started — and ended — with Jaylen Brown simply being one of the best offensive talents in the league. He has become too strong to muscle out of the paint, too sure of himself to speed up, and too crafty to turn the ball over much against a greatly-diminished Heat team than the one that stunned the Celtics in 2023.
Brown shot 17-for-29 from the floor, adding three rebounds and seven assists.
Jayson Tatum recorded a triple-double
Tatum didn’t just record a triple-double, he did it with room to spare — 25 points, 18 (18!) rebounds and 11 assists in (you may have heard) just his 12th game back from rehabbing a torn Achilles, which he (you may have heard) suffered less than 11 months ago.
Like Brown, Tatum excels at drawing multiple defenders, and he was both precise and decisive in his passing on Wednesday — finding teammates in transition and out of the pick-and-roll.
The shooting efficiency still isn’t entirely there, but Tatum excels at so many other things that he is still incredibly productive even when he misses shots. Meanwhile, Brown’s emergence as one of the league’s best 1A scoring options this season has created a dynamic that works perfectly for where both players find themselves — Brown with newly discovered 1A powers, and Tatum figuring out which of his prodigious powers are currently available to him.
Bam Adebayo joked afterward that he can tell Tatum still isn’t entirely in shape, and that really does appear to be the last kink he needs to work through, but watching a limited version of Tatum is a reminder that while his physical traits are undeniably impactful, what really puts him at a different level is his skill and IQ, both of which are still firmly intact.
The Celtics won the game in the first quarter
After Brown pummeled the Heat in the first few minutes, Miami’s defense was left in smoldering ruin, and the Celtics took advantage — racing out to a 53-33 lead after the first 12 minutes, which was the highest scoring quarter of the NBA season to date.
The primary driver was, of course, Brown, but he had several accomplices, most notably Sam Hauser. Hauser made all five of his 3-pointers in the first quarter and put up 17 points overall in the historic outburst, finishing with 23 points on 9-for-11 shooting. Hauser has been emerging from a bit of a slump over the last five games, and Wednesday’s performance was the loudest indicator that the sharpshooting wing is on the verge of breaking out again.
“Usually when you’re in moments like that, you take poor shots,” Joe Mazzulla said afterward. “We didn’t do that. We kept fighting for good looks, the next best look. I thought that kind of kept the momentum going a bit.”
The rest of the game was something of a mess. The Celtics’ lead hovered between the mid-teens and the mid-20s for most of it, although the Heat took a chunk out of the advantage late in the third, which briefly awoke a Miami crowd that was left stunned by the hot shooting in the first quarter. During that quarter, the Heat made 11 3-pointers to pull themselves back within range.
But the Heat never got closer than nine (albeit early in the fourth quarter, when a nine-point lead was certainly surmountable), and the Celtics fully re-established order early in the fourth on a flurry by Hauser and Tatum that pushed the advantage back to 16. The Heat never seriously challenged again.
This play by Derrick White was ridiculous
You might not see a play that better exemplifies Derrick White’s impact than this one near the end of the first half.
With six seconds remaining, the Celtics forced a turnover, and the ball ended up in Hauser’s hands. White turned and raced up the floor to Hauser’s left, and Hauser dished to him. Without a dribble, White lobbed the ball toward the rim, where Brown flew through the air, grabbed it, and gently laid it in.
White, however, was far from finished — the entire Celtics team had run up the floor in transition, but the fast break was … too fast. The Celtics had left 1.5 seconds on the clock, and two Heat players were back at the opposite basket. Jaime Jaquez wisely whipped a baseball pass up the floor to Larsson, who appeared to have an open layup.
White, however, read the situation instantly. He turned on a dime and threw himself back up the floor, surprising Larsson so thoroughly with his transition closeout that the Heat guard accidentally threw the ball up and hit the shot clock on top of the backboard.
Incidentally, White also had this stifling block on Tyler Herro.
White finished with six points, five rebounds, and four assists — a statline that woefully understates his impact.
Neemias Queta showed discipline
Lost a bit in the bright lights of Brown’s 40-point game and Tatum’s triple-double, Neemias Queta put together one of his better two-way performances — 16 points, 11 rebounds and three assists, and a hard-nosed defensive effort against Heat star Bam Adebayo.
Mazzulla lauded Queta’s discipline afterward, which is a major step for a player who struggled badly with foul trouble last year.
“Adebayo is a tremendous player— puts a ton of pressure on you because he can shoot now, gets to the free-throw line, forces 2-on-1 or overhelps,” Mazzulla said. “[Queta’s] defensive discipline, and the commitment he has to the gameplan […], he has to play at a high level for us to be good, he understands that, and he takes responsibility for that.”
Standings watch
The Knicks were off on Wednesday but will have a chance to pull back to within two of the two seed Thursday against the Bulls. Their potentially all-important head-to-head against the Celtics is a week from today.
Notably, the Raptors lost to the Kings, which dropped them into seventh. Toronto now joins the Hornets, Magic, and Heat in position for the play-in games, which would determine Boston’s opponent if they hold off the Knicks.
The Celtics will travel to Milwaukee on Friday before returning home for a game against the Raptors on Sunday afternoon. They take on the Hornets in Boston on Tuesday.
Sign up for the Today newsletter
Get everything you need to know to start your day, delivered right to your inbox every morning.
