Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown reunited after taking respective games off in the brief back-to-back home stand and both took an early breather in one of their most connected offensive efforts all season. They combined to shoot 19-for-30 from the field, hitting 7-of-12 from three as the Celtics raced ahead of the Spurs with a 40-23 third quarter before Boston’s bench shut the game down with a 7-0 run to begin the fourth.
Boston won, 134-101, closing out 2023 on New Year’s Eve with their 56th win in 72 regular season games this calendar year. They’re 26-6 this season, lead the east by 2.0 games over Milwaukee and a retook a 1.5 game advantage over the Timberwolves for the best mark in the NBA. They’re healthy, thriving on both ends, saw their three best offensive efforts of the season in the closing weeks of December while seeing their best two players produce in tandem.
The Celtics spent mid-December reinventing their offense resting, getting Brown a night off against Detroit following a stellar month where he set a tone for the team’s faster-paced attack and consistently made good decisions with the ball. He finished December averaging 24.4 points, 5.2 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 1.2 steals per game while shooting 53.8% from the field and 38.5% from three in 13 appearances. Brown also limited his turnovers to 2.7 per game and elevated his season total to 3.7 APG, the highest mark of his career.
For Tatum, who rested his sore ankle against Toronto that he injured earlier in December against the Warriors, two lethal shooting nights overshadowed a five-game stretch where he fell below 27% on pull-up threes. The new offensive approach also challenged Tatum to play more up-tempo and away from the ball late in Boston’s win over the Pistons. The Celtics generated a 104.5 pace in San Antonio with their 100 possessions marking the 10th-most in their games this season, and seventh-most outside of overtime games despite Jrue Holiday resting and Al Horford starting in a double-big lineup.
“Reinvent might be the wrong word,” Mazzulla said last week. “(But) you look at the road trip coming up and the number of teams that we’re playing against, on-ball switching and off-ball switching are the two things we’re gonna see. We’ve known over the last few years, switching has slowed us down. So can we think with the end in the sense of, how can we attack switching differently in order to change the pace of the game versus good defenses that try to switch, that try to get into us and try to slow us down. Our transition has to do that and then our off-ball pace and execution has to do that. It was just something that I thought was important for us to stress during this stretch of games.”
Boston pulled away from San Antonio after an up-and-down first half by locking in defensively, utilizing Brown as a cutter in the half court and generating threes for Tatum. They scored 10 straight after halftime to push ahead by 22 points after finishing the second by letting Derrick White drive an 17-6 run in response to the Spurs shooting 10-for-12 to pull within four earlier in the quarter. White shot 7-for-11 and scored 17 points with five assists, opening up his pick-and-roll connections with Kristaps Porziņģis to get him going in the second after an 0-for-7 start and setting up Luke Kornet for 12 points in 16 minutes after his 20-point outburst on Friday.
Defensively, Porziņģis and Victor Wembanyama largely cancelled each other out, crashing into each other around the rim in the half court while the rookie prodigy’s transition runs proved more troublesome. White tried to chase one of his run-outs down from behind, but ran through the baseline to avoid as Wembanyama flew from the free throw line for the slam. He finished with 21 points, seven rebounds and three assists in his first career meeting with Boston, but the Celtics turned him over three times as he shot 8-for-16 from the field.
“I’m not an idiot,” White joked about Wembanyama’s slam. “I was hoping he’d take another dribble … but he just picked it up and then I never saw it again … the things he can do on the court are pretty special. He’s just coming into his own and figuring out how to play in this league.”
Wembanyama described the Celtics as having something extra compared to their recent incarnations, while noting that they made few mistakes in a game where they only turned the ball over 10 times, tied for their eight-lowest total of the season. Boston’s players and coach’s lauded its ability to play faster and still maintain ball control to close December. Six of the Celtics’ 10 lowest turnover games occurred during their last nine games.
Gregg Popovich also praised Boston’s ability to defend, run and execute offensively. He credited Joe Mazzulla’s coaching, the Celtics’ all-star talent and their combination of grit and execution. They’re constantly improving, he added, and noted that the Spurs ran into Boston at a difficult time.
“They’re a championship-caliber team, that’s what they’re out there for. That’s their goal and they proved it once again,” Popovich said. “That’s a hell of a team.”
