With the two #2 seeds in their respective conferences on the parquet, TD Garden had a playoff feel with the Spurs taking the potential Finals preview 100-95 over the Celtics.
In the first half, the Celtics played their brand of basketball: low turnovers with just 5, hot shooting from behind the arc (8-of-19) that included two absolute moonballs from Jaylen Brown and a pair from Luka Garza, and seven points off turnovers.
Against Victor Wembanyama, Joe Mazzulla matched the big man’s minutes with Jordan Walsh. With Sam Hauser unavailable with right hamstring tightness, Hugo Gonzalez replaced him in the starting lineup. It proved to be less a further demotion for the 6’6Walsh and rather a vote of confidence for him to defend 7’5 Frenchman. Wembanyama would finish with just five points off five shots and Boston up five through the first two quarters.
In the third quarter, Wemby fueled an 11-2 run to tie the game up at 64 with the Spurs eventually taking the lead early in the fourth. With San Antonio in town, it marked the returns of fan favorites Luke Kornet (check out the tribute video here) and Kelly Olynyk. We might soon be singing the praises of Baylor Scheierman. He’s been solid all year in limited minutes, but his ten points (2-for-2 from 3), two steals, and solid defense may have been his best game so far this season.
In the end, a closing double-big lineup of Kornet and Wembanyama kept the Celtics on the perimeter in the final minutes and after a win against the Raptors last night, it just never seemed like Boston got their legs under them. Brown finished with 27 points with an uncharacteristically inefficient night, hitting just eleven of his 28 shots; he was lights out from three, but the usual mid-range assassin didn’t have his shot from 15-feet. And after double-digit free throw attempts against Toronto and Denver, Brown didn’t have a single trip to the line against the aggressive Spurs.
Derrick White led the Celtics in scoring with 29 points. Wembanyama and De’Aaron Fox both had 21.
The Celtics split their four-game homestand 2-2. They’ll head out for six-of-seven games on the road in Indiana, Miami, Atlanta, Detroit, and Chicago as the league heads towards the February 5th trade deadline.
