BOSTON — Clinching the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference was important. And based on the way the Boston Celtics handled the injury report ahead of Friday night’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans, they knew that.
Jayson Tatum was always listed as out. He played on Thursday, and playing back-to-backs isn’t in his recovery game plan. But he wasn’t the only guy on the injury report. Jaylen Brown, Neemias Queta, Sam Hauser, and Derrick White were, too.
But all four of those guys played. And it made all the difference.
New Orleans sat a lot of its top rotation pieces, going to guys like Micah Peavy and Josh Oduro as focal points of its rotation. Unfortunately, there was no Miracle on Ice type of performance from that crew, as the days of Boston playing down to its competition have long since ended.
Led by Hauser’s eight, the Celtics rained down a barrage of 3-pointers. Twenty-nine of them, to be exact. A mark that tied the NBA record. The Milwaukee Bucks did it once back in 2020, the Memphis Grizzlies did it this season, and Friday night was Boston’s second-ever game with 29 triples. The other one was on opening night (banner/ring night) in 2024.
“Yeah, I mean, obviously, you have to make shots,” Joe Mazzulla said of the Celtics’ 3-point-heavy evening. “But I think just good execution. I mean, Sam got hot. But I liked the shots that we got, and we were able to make them. And obviously, once you see a few go in, it continues to do that. So, hopefully we didn’t use them all up in one game.”
Boston was stuck at 28 for a while before an Hugo Gonzalez 3-pointer snapped a drought from beyond the arc that lasted 5:18 of game time.
At that point, everyone was fully aware of the Celtics’ chance at NBA history. Well, almost everyone.
TD Garden began chanting “One more three” over and over again.
“It’s easy to be aware of when you hear the crowd and everything,” Payton Pritchard said. “Maybe they got to be quiet, though, and we could break it one day.”
White stood up and jokingly told Hauser to go check himself back into the game.
Yet when Luka Garza got the ball in his hands with 47 seconds left, the Celtics up by 28 points, he faked a hand-off and drove to the rim for a dunk.
As some of his teammates celebrated on the bench, others laughed. Baylor Scheierman smiled and looked at him as if to say, “What are you doing?” White, visible in the clip, waved his hand in Garza’s direction. Perhaps Garza knew what he was doing. Perhaps not. But it may have been the funniest Celtics dunk of the season.
Scheierman had a chance to snap the record, but his three didn’t fall, much to the chagrin of TD Garden. Still, 29 threes is nothing to scoff at, especially considering this may have been a tune-up game ahead of the playoffs.
Almost everyone got involved. Nikola Vucevic shook off some 3-point rust. Scheierman carried over his hot stretch from the New York Knicks game on Thursday night.
Even Queta nailed a three. A three that sent the Celtics’ bench into a frenzy.
“It was great,” Hauser said of Queta’s three. “Buttery. It was buttery. He was pretty excited about that one, and we were pretty excited for him.”
On a night like Friday, it’s hard to form any substantial basketball takeaways. The Pelicans weren’t healthy, and even if they were, this still would have presented as an easy game on Boston’s schedule. At least, on paper.
But if nothing else, it let the Celtics see the ball go in.
Mazzulla always yells at his players to contest shots that are taken after the whistle. He doesn’t want opponents to see the ball go in, which could allow them to find a shooting rhythm outside of in-game action.
Well, with the playoffs right around the corner, Boston couldn’t have asked for a better “see-the-ball-go-in” night.
