BOSTON — The Warriors sat their starters after halftime.
The Celtics waited only one rotation longer to give theirs a rest in a game they effectively sealed by the end of the first quarter against a team that previously troubled them as greatly as any other opponent. Boston ran up the score on a 58-15 run through the late stages of the second quarter, reaching 30-3 at its most dominant after finishing 23-1 to end the first.
They won 140-88, ending a recent Warriors hot streak and breaking a stretch following their 2022 Finals loss where Golden State had defeated them in 2-of-3 meetings, including the overtime loss on the road in December.
Jaylen Brown attacked a Warriors defense early and often that seemed to hedge away from him, scoring 19 in the opening quarter on 6-of-12 shooting, including three consecutive three-pointers after Golden State tied the game at 21. Brown scored Boston’s first five points, including a turnaround floater — flashing the too small sign at Steph Curry.
“We were really grateful for that,” Joe Mazzulla said. “I just kept saying thank you.”
Curry played and scored only four points after entering the afternoon questionable with right knee bursitis. Kristaps Porzingis sat out with a left quad contusion, thrusting Al Horford into a start in a Boston lineup that had narrowly lost its minutes (-0.1 per 100 possessions) to that point. Brown got the ball five times over a seven possession stretch early in the quarter, missing three shots from behind the arc. On his final one, Draymond Green stood in the paint and dared Brown to shoot.
Green said the Warriors came up with that approach 15 minutes before the game. Brown obliged by taking nearly every shot, six of their first 10 attempts, which Boston’s players admitted they were willing to do to exploit the alignment. After Jonathan Kuminga and Moses Moody found back lanes to the basket and Curry tied the game at 21, Brown spotted up three times in a row to drive the lead up to nine. Jayson Tatum didn’t score until he returned late in the first with the second unit, who had already extended the lead to double-digits with a pair of baskets from Sam Hauser and Luke Kornet.
“I don’t necessarily think we put together a full defensive strategy,” Green said.
While Green wrote off the loss as a product of made shots by Brown, Curry took a deeper shot at the idea, saying it also impacted the team’s offensive approach. Golden State shot 17.1% from three, fading late in the first as they only mustered a technical foul shot on a make over the final 6:05 of the first. Boston ignored Lester Quiñones and Trayce Jackson-Davis far more effectively than the Warriors did Brown, unleashing heavy pressure on Chris Paul, who scored two points with two assists.
“(The defensive game plan) was a joint decision coaching staff and obviously the leaders on the team to try something different. They’ve been playing at a high level and you want a team that has that many threat, you try to find a weak spot to try to throw them off a little bit,” Curry told CLNS Media. “Obviously it didn’t work … no regrets on how we approached it and a good learning lesson for us to take the hit we took tonight but not let it linger into another game, because we’ve on the whole been playing some solid basketball.”
Tatum found his shot into the second quarter as the Celtics shifted to double big with Xavier Tillman and Horford, a successful look from Friday’s win over the Mavericks. Hauser and Pritchard scored five points to extend the lead to 25, Tatum posted up to get on the board and hit a pair of free throws on the following possession to extend Boston’s run to 32-3 between quarters.
After Tatum and Brown connected on a feed downhill, finding the basket routinely with Green off the floor, Jrue Holiday finishing on the second try after recovering the loose ball on another feed to Brown at the rim. Brown took over defensively, pressuring Curry at half court and forcing a back court violation. Tatum followed with a pull-up three. The Celtics led, 71-32, with 3:08 still remaining in the first half.
When Mazzulla assessed the game, deciding to play the starters for five minutes to begin the second half, he called the 13-2 run to begin the third the key segment. Another step for a team that’s won 11 straight games and seemingly never satisfied anymore, even ahead by 8.5 games in the east.
“When you have a creative idea and it doesn’t work and you’re taking the ball out of the basket and they’re hitting 10 threes in the first quarter. That’s what we used to do to teams,” Curry said. “It’s kind of demoralizing … then you feel like you have to play home run basketball on the other end to try to make it up and that’s where the momentum shift kept going their way … every little play goes their way and you look up and you’re down friggin 40. It’s one of those nights.”
