Celtics rout Clippers from start to finish, and from deep
Standing with a microphone at midcourt Saturday afternoon, Clippers wing Terance Mann began to deliver the team’s customary holiday address to fans when he improvised .
“There’s a lot of green in here,” Mann said, drawing a mixture of jeers and cheers. “I don’t like that.”
For the next two-plus hours during a 145-108 rout of the Clippers, it was all green on the court, too.
The points were the most allowed by the Clippers this season, while Boston’s 53 three-point attempts are the most allowed in franchise history.
The Celtics outrebounded them by 17, took nearly double the number of free throws (28 to 15), nearly tripled their second-chance points (23 to 8) and committed fewer turnovers (9 to 10).
The Clippers (17-12) might have pointed to other disadvantages. They had one fewer day of rest. Just as in Thursday’s loss in Oklahoma City that ended the Clippers’ nine-game winning streak, Kawhi Leonard did not play because of a hip contusion that coach Tyronn Lue again classified as “day to day.”
Yet when Boston (22-6) led by 30 points late in the third quarter, well before both teams emptied their bench, despite missing key starter Kristaps Porzingis, there was little doubt which team was the class of its conference, and which still has work to do to enter such a conversation.
“We told our team after the game, these last two games, don’t let it discourage what we’ve built and what we’ve been doing over the last three, four weeks.”
Paul George, who scored a team-high 21 points, and center Ivica Zubac, who had 16 points and 10 rebounds, said they agreed with Lue’s postgame message believing their consecutive losses hadn’t unwound progress from their previous nine wins.
“We’re a better team than this,” Zubac said, “and that’s it.”
“We’re in a great spot, we won nine leading up to the two losses,” George said. “... We played two of the better teams in the NBA. Doesn’t derail from where we’re headed and where we’re trying to get to.”
The Celtics made 25 of their 53 three-pointers despite a scouting report that clearly noted that Boston led the NBA in attempted three-pointers. Boston repeatedly took open threes in transition after pushing the ball up as the Clippers tried, often unsuccessfully, to locate their man.
“Everyone’s trying to find their match but, just got to take the guy that’s next to you no matter who’s your matchup in transition,” Zubac said. “You can’t be looking at where’s your guy running and if you’re on the other side of the floor, you can’t look at him and go there; you got to stay with the guy that’s closest to you. I think that hurt us a lot with just those open looks.”
The Clippers, meanwhile, took 55 shots inside the arc, a disparity that turned their attempts for a comeback into a math problem.
“We knew they were going to shoot threes,” Lue said. “We just didn’t do a good job defensively. Or offensively, in that regard.”
James Harden had 14 points and nine assists. Backup center Daniel Theis had 15 points and guard Russell Westbrook scored 12 off the bench. But complementary scorers such as wings Amir Coffey, who started in Leonard’s place, and Mann struggled to provide the kind of offensive boosts that helped keep the team’s winning streak alive when Boston unveiled a defensive wrinkle of guarding them with a center. Mann missed all 10 of his shots, while Coffey made one of his three .
“They did some things differently, putting their center on guards and being able to switch a lot of different things and we weren’t ready for that,” Lue said. He added that, “it was a good learning experience for me. Then we’ll be ready next time that happens.”
Jayson Tatum had 30 points and Jaylen Brown scored 24 as few starters for either team played in the fourth quarter. Celtics guard Derrick White showed why he is one of the league’s best defenders by blocking three shots to go with 18 points.
Playing from behind almost immediately after scoring their fewest points in an opening quarter since Dec. 6, the Clippers’ deficit grew to 16 quickly in the quarter when they continued to struggle grabbing rebounds to extend their own possessions or end those of Boston. Before the Clippers scored their first points off a second-chance opportunity, Boston already had 10. Seven of the game’s first eight offensive rebounds went to Boston.
Then there was the issue of Tatum. He spun past rookie forward Kobe Brown — playing his first true rotation minutes in three games — for a vicious one-handed dunk in the first quarter, then drew a four-point play on Brown in the second. His teammate, Norman Powell, pulled aside Brown during the ensuing timeout to talk about guarding Tatum’s step-back move.
In 15 NBA seasons, the Clippers’ Russell Westbrook has never been named to an all-defense team. Would such an honor bring validation for him?
Tatum had 21 points at halftime. The Clippers’ stingy defense had gone nearly a month without allowing a 40-point quarter — on Saturday, it happened for a second consecutive game.
Yet the high volume of three-pointers that fueled Tatum’s big half — eight three-point attempts and five makes — were no outlier. This season, teams on average take 34.9 three-pointers and make 12.8 of them every game; the Celtics eclipsed or came close to passing those marks by halftime, by making 15 of their first 33 three-pointers. And the Celtics reached their league-leading season average for three-point attempts by the end of the third quarter.
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