ALL STEPHEN CURRY All he could do was shrug his shoulders.
It was Sunday inside the visiting locker room at TD Garden, and the NBA-leading Boston Celtics had just handed the Golden State Warriors their worst loss with the two-time MVP in the lineup. The 140-88 rout included 10 3-pointers in the first quarter and a 61-17 run in an 18-minute span that sealed the Warriors' fate at halftime.
“That's what we used to do with teams,” Curry, the master of similar scoring streaks during Golden State's march to four championships in eight seasons, said from his locker after the game.
“It's a little demoralizing.”
Boston's victory on Sunday gave it three wins of at least 50 points this season, the most in NBA history with more than a month left in the regular season. Meanwhile, the Celtics' point differential of plus-243 during their 11-game winning streak also set a league record.
Boston leads the league in offensive efficiency, is second in the league in defense and is posting historic point differentials.
But Boston enters Thursday's game against the Denver Nuggets, a matchup of title favorites, having played arguably its worst quarter of the season, highlighted particularly by the late struggles of superstar forward Jayson Tatum.
On Wednesday, just two days after that 52-point victory over Curry's Warriors, the Celtics blew a 22-point lead in the final nine minutes against the short-handed Cleveland Cavaliers, a collapse capped by the failed and disputed game-winning escape of Tatum. at the last second.
“Just a weird way to end the game,” Tatum said of the 105-104 loss. “But they always say that the game is not won or lost on the last play.”
Boston's status as a giant is undeniable. Since 2016-17, Jaylen Brown's rookie season, the Celtics have the best regular-season winning percentage in the NBA, and only the Warriors have won more playoff games.
But until this team wins that elusive 18th title, this group of Celtics players will be judged by how things finish, whether it's protecting a fourth-quarter lead in March or successfully closing out a playoff series in May and June. .
“Your habits are everything,” Brown said of the task ahead of the Celtics as they prepare for the postseason. “Your mentality is everything. And in every game, you can't waste any possession, you can't waste time on the court.”
THE NBA HAS NOT I've seen a lot of regular season races like the 2023-24 Celtics.
Despite Tuesday's loss, the Celtics' points-per-game differential this season (11.2) is the fifth-largest in league history behind a quartet of iconic championship teams: the 1971 Los Angeles Lakers- 72 (12.3), 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks. (12.3), the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls (12.2) and the 2016-17 Warriors (11.6).
The Celtics, who are on pace for 66 wins, would become the 18th team in league history to reach that mark. Of the previous 17 teams with 66 wins, 12 won the championship that season. Bottom line: It's been a dominant performance through the first three quarters of the regular season.
2:54
Celtics defeat Warriors and achieve 11th consecutive victory
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown led the Celtics to the third-largest victory in franchise history with a 140-88 victory over the Warriors.
For Celtics big man Kristaps Porzingis, who joined a lineup that also added former champion guard Jrue Holiday this summer, the group's ceiling was immediately visible.
“We have to give a lot of credit to our front office for putting together this type of team,” Porzingis said on Feb. 24 after a win over the New York Knicks. “When the opportunity [to join Boston] “It showed up, at least for me, I said this was going to work, 100 percent.”
And in today's NBA, the most versatile and malleable lineups are often the most successful. No team embodies that better than these Celtics.
The top eight players in Boston's rotation (Tatum, Brown, Holiday, White, Porzingis, Al Horford, Sam Hauser and Payton Pritchard) each attempt at least five 3-pointers every 36 minutes, and all but Brown (35.4%) They are getting it right. 37% or better from deep.
Not surprisingly, the Celtics lead the league in three-pointers made (16.3) and attempts (42.3) per game, while ranking fourth in the league in making 38.6% of their shots from deep. And having so many shooting threats across the board means teams will pay the price for trying to focus their attention on Boston's two main offensive engines, Tatum and Brown.
Or they'll have to try something like Golden State did on Sunday, essentially deciding it was worth challenging Brown to shoot and live with the results, only for him to immediately bury five 3-pointers to put the game out of reach.
“If you want to challenge me to shoot, we can do it,” Brown said after Sunday's win.
The group's defensive versatility has also given rival teams headaches.
Let's consider Tuesday's game in Cleveland. Boston placed Holiday on Cavaliers forward Isaac Okoro, a defensive end, for long stretches, allowing him to roam around and help the defense. That was because Boston could put Brown or White on Darius Garland, Cleveland's elite perimeter ball handler.
With Holiday and White, two of the league's best individual on-ball defenders, in the starting backcourt, Boston can attack teams in a way few can defensively. Overall, the Celtics have blitzed a total of just 47 ball screens this season, according to Second Spectrum tracking data (1.1% of the time, the second-lowest total in the league). When the starting five are there, they have only attacked five ball screens. all season (0.66%).
“The confidence they play with and how every player on their team has accepted their role,” Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff said before Tuesday's game about what impressed him about the Celtics.
“They know who they are. They know how talented they are, but they allow each other to be successful in their own spaces.”
THE END OF THE GAME SEQUENCE Wednesday showed similarities to another one-possession game that Boston failed to secure six weeks ago. At home against the Nuggets on January 19, Boston missed eight of its last nine shots, but, like against Cleveland, still had a chance to tie or win the game with 4.9 seconds left.
Just like in Cleveland, the ball was in Tatum's hands as Boston settled for a lopsided possession — a missed jumper that he later admitted was rushed.
“Deep down, I wasn't sure if they were going to foul,” Tatum said at the time. “They had a foul to commit. But I had more time than I gave myself, so I should have taken more time.
“But I can't go back. Something I can learn from.”
0:27
Tatum's miss at buzzer sends Celtics to first home loss of season
Jayson Tatum misses a game-tying jumper as the Nuggets win and snap the Celtics' unbeaten home streak to start the season.
Tatum's clutch stats aren't pretty. This season, he is 15-for-46 (32.6%) in crunch time, including 0-for-2 on Tuesday. Among the 25 players who have made at least 45 game-winning shots this season, Tatum ranks last in field goal percentage.
And Tatum's struggles in the clutch aren't limited to this season. His clutch field goal percentage over the past three seasons ranks in the bottom 10 among more than 70 players with at least 100 attempts.
The Celtics may still have to overcome superstars like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid and Jimmy Butler to return to the Finals. And Boston's depth could be challenged, particularly at center if Porzingis falters at any point.
However, the Celtics remain in an enviable position, 7.5 games ahead of the second-place Bucks, with home field advantage essentially assured as they approach the playoffs, where they will ultimately hope to lift the franchise's 18th championship. banner in June.
That's why the message coming from this group hasn't wavered between the highs of winning streaks and 50-point blowouts and the lows of late-game meltdowns like Tuesday's in Cleveland: All that matters, after years of success in the regular season followed by postseason heartbreak, that's how the Celtics finish.
“Very confident in our group all year,” White told ESPN after Tuesday's loss, when asked if the team's recent winning streak changed his opinion on its ceiling.
“We're just playing good basketball. We just want to continue and try to play our best basketball by the end of the year.”
ESPN's Kendra Andrews and ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this report.
