Celtics
White stepped up in place of the injured Jaylen Brown on Friday, scoring a team-high 23 points on 8-for-16 shooting.
Derrick White and the Celtics routed the Rockets 109-86 in the second half on Friday, claiming their second road win in as many days.
Here are the takeaways.
Derrick White’s All-Star case is strong (albeit unlikely).
It will be very hard for Derrick White to make the All-Star team this year in a very crowded field, but performances like Friday make his case a lot stronger.
On a night when the Celtics were without Jaylen Brown – and on a night when the Rockets were dead set on not letting Jayson Tatum beat them – White was more than up to the task of being the Celtics’ second star, hurting the Rockets in a wide variety of ways en route to a team-high 23 points on 8-for-16 shooting.
White was, of course, more than happy to launch threes when the Rockets lost him defensively, and he finished 6-for-12. He also dropped in a tear-drop floater when the Rockets closed out hard. Midway through the fourth, he did the same – taking advantage of a defense that desperately wanted to prevent him from getting off a triple.
Defensively, White – like the rest of the Celtics team – was excellent. He was a terror on the perimeter, and he met Dillon Brooks at the rim in transition for what has essentially become his nightly highlight block.
Making an All-Star team isn’t supposed to be easy, and White placed 10th in the initial voting returns. A couple of the players ahead of him are likely to fall off as voting continues (does Jordan Poole, for instance, have a dedicated room at his house for friends and family to keep spamming his name?), but others like Jalen Brunson, Trae Young and Cade Cunningham may be hard to overcome.
Still, Celtics fans might prefer White over any of the aforementioned guards, and they certainly know what the team has in him – an All-Star caliber scorer who doubles as perhaps the best guard defender in the league.
Kristaps Porzingis returned.
Jaylen Brown remained out with a right shoulder strain after missing Thursday’s win over the Timberwolves, but Kristaps Porzingis returned after taking an odd step and spraining his ankle during the Celtics’ Christmas Day loss to the 76ers.
Porzingis was relatively quiet in just 27 minutes of action, scoring 11 points on 3-for-8 shooting. Importantly, however, he buried a pair of 3-pointers and blocked two shots. The Celtics missed Porzingis’ rim protection, and Houston’s reluctance to drive straight at Porzingis was apparent.
“It’s tough for him because he’s going through a transition of coming in,” Mazzulla said. “I thought his defense in the second half was tremendous. We went to a couple things that kind of got him going a little bit on some pindowns. I thought for his first game back, I thought it was great.”
Having Porzingis back matters a great deal on both ends. The star big man makes getting to the rim a lot easier for the Celtics’ slashers, and the Celtics’ defense can be a lot more aggressive knowing he is waving his long arms at shots in the paint – Porzingis contested 11 shots, according to the NBA’s data, second-highest on the team only behind Luke Kornet’s 14.
White, incidentally, was third with nine shots contested. Nobody else contested more than four.
The Celtics’ defense is very back.
Without going too overboard and declaring that the Celtics will go back to winning at last year’s clip the rest of the way, the last few games have been a strong statement by a team that was one of the best defensive squads in the league last year.
On Friday, the Celtics gave up 31 points in the first quarter. They then proceeded to allow just 25 in the second and 16 in the third as they took control of the game. In the fourth, they made everything Houston tried a slog, allowing just seven points to the regular rotation before both teams emptied their bench (the Rockets finished the frame with 14).
Earlier this week, Joe Mazzulla seemed to mock the idea that the defensive struggles were a result of a lack of effort. The fact that the Celtics have more or less fixed their defense immediately after talking about how they wanted to fix their defense, however, doesn’t exactly make his case for him.
“The ball pressure from guards, but playing double-big, having great rim protection, defending without fouling,” Mazzulla said when asked about the defense. “I think they had 11 second-chance points in the first quarter, three in the second, and we did a great job from there on out. I just thought we were physical at the point of attack, had great point pressure.
“Our bigs gave us great rim protection. Luke was fantastic on both ends of the floor. His rim protection vs. [Alperen] Sengun and his offensive rebounding. That’s the standard defensively that we all know, and it was good to see the guys do it.”
Jayson Tatum dropped Cam Whitmore
Tatum was relatively quiet as well (20 points on 7-for-19 shooting) and seemed relatively content to let his teammates feast off the defensive attention paid to him, but he did deliver this nasty crossover that sent Rockets guard Cam Whitmore to the floor.
Tatum finished 4-for-10 from three and notched six rebounds and five assists.
Payton Pritchard was absurdly efficient.
Pritchard cooked the Rockets, scoring 20 points on 8-for-10 shooting overall and 4-for-6 from three.
Some of Pritchard’s twos were particularly impressive – at one point late in the second quarter, he drove right at Rockets big man Steven Adams and dropped in a pull-up five-foot bank shot that created a 2-for-1 opportunity for the Celtics.
But he is, at heart, a devastating shooter.
Pritchard also seemed to have something to say to Ime Udoka (Udoka, for what it’s worth, didn’t take it too hard).
“We came out today and competed at a very high level and set the tone, especially in the second half, and got the W,” Pritchard told NBC Sports Boston after the game. “So this is how it’s got to be for the rest of the year.”
The Celtics’ second-unit bigs excelled.
One of Tatum’s assists was this nifty dime to Luke Kornet, which turned into one of the more unlikely posters of the season.
Kornet was excellent at the rim defensively (although Jalen Green hammered home a dunk on him that will almost certainly top Friday’s nightly dunk scores), and he tallied nine points and four assists. He also grabbed 10 rebounds, including six of the Celtics’ 10 offensive boards.
Neemias Queta, meanwhile, had another nice showing in 19 minutes off the bench after looking good against the Timberwolves on Thursday, punching home a pair of huge dunks.
Al Horford will turn 39 this season if the Celtics make a run as deep as they hope. Porzingis played just his 12th game on Friday. Having players like Kornet and Queta to sop up minutes has proven invaluable so far.
Ime Udoka vs. Joe Mazzulla has been one-sided so far.
After Ime Udoka was hired late in the 2022-23 season, the Rockets have been steadily trending upwards – their young talent thriving under a coach who doesn’t let anyone off the hook if they don’t defend at a high level.
Mazzulla and the Celtics, however, are now 3-0 against Udoka after beating him twice last year, and two of those wins have been by more than 20.
Celtics-Rockets could develop into a fun inter-conference rivalry if the Rockets’ young players continue on their current development path, but against a Celtics team that rivals all-time great rosters in NBA history, Houston still has a lot of ground to make up.
Celtics fans continue to travel well.
Celtics fans have made themselves heard in a few different locales – Washington DC in particular sounds like a home game at times – but they were unusually loud in Houston as the Celtics pulled away.
A reporter asked Tatum about playing on the road.
“Seeing all those people out there with Tatum jerseys and shirts, and people having my shoes, and like I said, kids might’ve got this ticket for their birthday or Christmas, knowing that’s the only time I get to come in town,” Tatum said.
“That’s why I never want to miss road games. That’s why I understand the importance of playing in front of your fans, especially on the road. I love going on the road, I love playing in front of different crowds and seeing all the support we have around the country.”
The road trip continues.
Any reasonable observer would have said that a 3-1 road trip for the Celtics would be a major success.
They are now 2-0, and they took care of a brutally difficult back-to-back against two playoff teams in the Western Conference separated by nearly 1,200 miles.
Next up, the Celtics get their first crack of the season at one of the genuine contenders in the Western Conference: Shai Gilgeous Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“Phenomenal player, it’s going to be a big challenge,” Porzingis told reporters afterward, before stopping and chuckling. “These are like super typical answers. But honestly – some challenges, and we want to try to limit him at the rim as much as we can and try to make it as grinding as possible for him to try and wear him down.”
That showdown tips off Sunday at 3:30 p.m.
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