BOSTON – Celtics were 112, Hawks were 99 on Saturday.
Are you ready for three more?
Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals was not a playoff. It was a playoff. Boston led by ten points after one quarter. They advanced by 30 in the half. Atlanta’s three-point percentage over two quarters: 6.3%. Sure enough, the Falcons closed to 19 at the end of the third and at one point narrowed the lead to 12 in the fourth. Big deal. All he did was prevent Luke Kornet from picking up a few postseason minutes.
If the 57-win regular season wasn’t enough of a reminder of the strength of the Celtics, it was Saturday. Want a crime? Three Celtics starters have scored at least 24 points. Robert Williams jumped off the bench and shot 12 points. Jaylen Brown scored 29 points. Jason Tatum added 25. Boston shot 47.7% from the floor and 39.4% from three. That big rebounding edge the Hawks had in a game play against Miami? Boston beat Atlanta 58-45 on the glass.
“I loved our intent,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzola said. “Especially in the first half. We obviously had a lull in the third quarter but I thought we kept playing. We kept trying to get through that lull. I thought we made enough plays. That’s good, now we know we can play better.”
Defensively, Boston, which was ranked the third most efficient in the NBA during the regular season, was sharp. Atlanta shot 38.8% from three. They took 29 threes… and made five of them. “One of those nights,” DeGaunt Murray said. Three Celtics — Al Horford, Derrick White, and Marcus Smart — bought two blocks each. Murray and Tra Young, the two drives powering the Hawks’ offense, combined to shoot 15-43 from the ground.
“We got some takes,” Young said. “I think we got some pretty good looks. The shots just weren’t falling through. We have to get more stops when things like that happen.”
poor young man He had 25 points in the Atlanta win. In Game 1, he needed 18 shots to score 16. This could be an ugly streak for Young. Whether it’s Smart, White or Malcolm Brogdon, for most of his minutes he will have an elite defender in front of him. Young missed the first five shots. He didn’t make three – his Just Three – until the second quarter. On the other end, Boston was chasing him at every opportunity. Young played just six minutes in the fourth quarter—the fewest of any baserunner.
“We took a few blocks today,” said Hawks coach Quinn Snyder. “Come back and come back after that on Tuesday.”
An Atlanta optimist will look to the second half, when the Hawks edged the Celtics 55-38, as reason for optimism. “A lot of that was self-inflicted,” Jason Tatum said.
Even Snyder admitted that when a team builds a huge lead in the first half, it’s hard to stay focused. “Each game is its own story,” Brown said. “So we expect them to shoot their best in every game.”
The truth is, the Celtics are good. very good. Better than Atlanta. Perhaps the best of all. It’s been a strange year in Boston. The team loses its coach to a scandal days before training camp and does not miss a win in the first two months of the season. They had some adversity in the second half as they put a microscope on Mazzulla (he chews a lot of gum, doesn’t require enough time-out) but they got through. They have an MVP candidate (Tatum) and a close All-NBA friend (Brown) to lead them. They finished the season with the best winning percentage (. 695) since Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce wore the green.
Atlanta will be better in Game Two. But Boston will, too. Tuesday’s game will air “nationally” on NBATV, with the NBA sending games they kind of want you to care about but understand if you don’t. Tests are coming for the Celtics. Just probably not until the next round.