Celtics Return to Form in 132-109 Win Over Kings

The Celtics defeated the Kings 132-109 on Tuesday night to close out a 6 game road trip.

The Breakdown 

The Celtics ended their 6 game road trip with their 50th win of the season against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night 132-109.

Despite a strong showing by Sacramento at the start, the Celtics never let off the gas in a game that was more reminiscent of their early season success than anything we’ve seen from the team in recent weeks/months. Offensively the Celtics spread the ball around and on the defensive end they put the clamps on the NBA’s number one rated offense.

Jayson Tatum had a bounce back game following a 15 point dud in a 118-117 loss to the Jazz on Monday. He led all scorers with 36 points.

As a whole this was one of Boston’s most complete performances of the season. They shot 53.3% from the field, %41.2 from three and racked up 32 assists while committing only 5 turnovers.

Boston’s bounce-back win places them just two games behind the Bucks for the top spot in the East and one game up on Philly for second with 9 games to play in the regular season.

Studs and Duds

Studs

Jayson Tatum

Jayson Tatum redeemed himself after several lackluster performances since the All-Star break. Tatum dropped 36 points on on 14-25 shooting. He took only 7 threew pointers and instead spent most of the night attacking the paint.  Tatum matched Larry Bird’s record for the most thirty point games in a single season with 30.

Derrick White

White filled up the stat sheet in almost every way imaginable with 20 points, 7 rebounds, 12 assists, and 2 blocks. Even with Rob Williams healthy, White sayed in the starting lineup and played a whopping 38 minutes, most on the team.

Jaylen Brown

On a day where Brown made headlines for his comments off the court (more in a moment) on it he was the same dominant and efficient player he’s been over the past few weeks. Brown dropped a cool 27 points on 10-16 shooting, 4-7 from deep.

Duds

Celtics Free Throw Shooting

Maybe the only area of the game the Celtics didn’t excel was at the charity stripe. The Celtics were 16-23 from the line with five of those 7 misses coming from Jayson Tatum who went 6-for-11 including two misses to start the game.

Turning Point

The Celtics entered the second half up 6 and let the Kings hang around for most of the quarter until Boston stepped on the gas and went on an 11-0 run culminated by a Derrick White 3 (one of 5 on the night for him.) ThT pushed the lead to 19 and it never got to single digits again.

That what he/she said 

Jaylen Brown made headlines following an in depth interview with the Ringer in which he was non-commital  about his future in Boston and critical of the Celtics organization and the handling of the latest Kevin Durant saga. After the game Brown responded to those comment without offering any specfiic clarification.

“I think sometimes when people write articles, they get taken out of context at times, especially when writers have their own agendas or whatever,” Brown said. “So, for me personally, I’m thinking about clarifying some of the things that have been recently said. But other than that, I’m just focused on my team. I’m focused on playing basketball and focused on winning games.”

 Sweat the Bet 

The Celtics were just a five point favorites to win this game according the FanDuel Sportsbook so Celtics betters had to feel pretty solid after Boston pulled away late in the 3rd quarter and never looked back.

Cleaning the Glass

• The Celtics ended the road trip 4-2
• With a fully healthy lineup the Joe Mazzulla opted to keep a tight 8 man rotation that did not include Sam Hauser, Luke Kornet or Mike Muscalla.
• Mazzulla abandoned double big in favor of a smaller starting lineup featuring Derrick White
• Rob Williams came off the bench and scored 6 points, and grabbed 7 boards in 21 minutes.