Thunder beat ice-cold Celtics for 15th straight win: Takeaways

Celtics

The Oklahoma City Thunder beat the Celtics 105-92 in Oklahoma on Sunday.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the Oklahoma City Thunder dominated the second half on Sunday, pulling away to beat the Celtics 105-92 and extend their winning streak to 15 games. 

Here are the takeaways.

1. SGA and the Thunder are the real deal.

The Celtics shot poorly from 3-point range the entire evening, and they were particularly bad in the second half. They also turned the ball over a ton, which led to a 13-3 advantage in fast-break points for the Thunder. 

The Thunder may have caught a bit of a break from the Celtics’ 3-point shooting; they generated a fair number of good looks and couldn’t knock them down, which makes their offense a lot easier to defend. 

But OKC did plenty of damage defensively as well. They are fast, aggressive, and strong as a unit, and they don’t have any obvious weak links like so many of the Celtics’ other rivals. The Celtics attacked Cason Wallace with Kristaps Porzingis a few times, taking advantage of OKC’s willingness to switch, and Jaylen Brown was effective in the first half getting downhill before the Thunder switched Lu Dort onto him and turned Brown over repeatedly. 

On the other end, meanwhile, Gilgeous-Alexander looked every bit the MVP candidate he is billed as. The Celtics threw every defender they had at him, and Gilgeous-Alexander simply maneuvered his way around each one. At one point, Gilgeous-Alexander even appeared to pick on Jrue Holiday, which — for obvious reasons — isn’t a sentence we write often in this space. Defensively, Gilgeous-Alexander was very solid, and he even recorded an incredible chase-down block on Tatum late in the fourth. He finished with a game-high 33 points (11-for-23 shooting) and finished with 11 rebounds and six assists.

Presumably, the next time these teams meet, the Celtics will be a little better. The next time these teams meet, however, the Thunder might have Chet Holmgren and Alex Caruso back in the lineup alongside their superstar guard. 

Sunday’s game was strange and probably wasn’t indicative of how these teams would match up in the playoffs. But, it certainly hammered home that the Thunder are a genuine threat to the Celtics’ hopes of a repeat if both teams are still alive in June.

2. The Celtics came apart at the seams (and went ice cold). 

The Celtics shot 9-for-46 from 3-point range on Sunday, an icy 19.6 percent from deep which was their worst performance from three of the season. 

They also turned the ball over 16 times, including three each by Jaylen Brown and Derrick White and four by Kristaps Porzingis. 

They scored 35 points in the first quarter, 30 in the second, and just 27 in the entire second half.

And as the game came down to the wire, the Celtics’ defense, which seemed so stalwart in the first half as they maintained their shape and flew around the floor, started to show cracks. Lu Dort buried three triples in the fourth quarter, the first two of which were a pair of daggers (and the third of which was salt in the wound). The Celtics, who continued hoisting 3-pointers long after it was clear that Sunday was not going to be their evening from behind the arc, also appeared to let a combination of the officiating and the Thunder’s aggressive defense get under their skin. 

The Thunder visit the Celtics on March 12 for a rematch. If both teams are relatively healthy, expect a bloodbath of a regular-season game. 

3. Jaylen Brown got to the rim a lot in the first half. 

It might get lost in the Celtics’ second-half failures offensively, but they actually put together one of their better performances of the season against a team selling out to stop its 3-pointers in the first half. The Celtics took 52 percent of their shots in the paint, and they scored 32 points. 

Brown was integral to that strategy, scoring 21 points on 8-for-12 shooting. He sliced past OKC defenders, finished through contact, and showed some nice touch on a couple of tough shots around the rim. 

Brown, like the rest of the Celtics, fell off enormously in the second half. He didn’t score the rest of the way (and as a team, the Celtics managed just eight more points in the paint). But for 24 minutes on Sunday, Brown and the Celtics looked like they had the answer for critics who said they couldn’t score against defenses focused on the 3-point line. 

4. Tatum had a scary fall.

As the game heated up in the third quarter, players started flying around after the ball. Tatum got into the action with a hustle play racing after a loose ball. 

Tatum went shoulder to shoulder with Jalen Williams as the pair pursued the ball, and Tatum was knocked to the floor in a scary position. 

It wasn’t entirely clear what Tatum hurt on the play — he came up favoring his wrist and shoulder, and he appeared to land on the ball, which can be disproportionately painful. In any case, he was down for several concerning moments before he was helped to his feet and slowly made his way to the bench. 

Tatum returned to the game and seemed to be okay. He was moving well, and he made a deep 3-pointer late. 

5. A final game on the road trip.

The Celtics will look to wrap up their road trip with a 3-1 record when they travel to Denver on Tuesday to take on Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets. The showdown tips off at 10 p.m.

We will have more takeaways later this evening.