Everything you need to know about the Celtics’ 119-110 win over the Hawks in quickie form.
Box score
HEADLINES
Another start, another gem for Terry Rozier: Rozier played the best game of his NBA career on Wednesday night and he may have found a way to top it during Friday’s win. The 23-year-old guard was electric during his 36 minutes, scoring a career-high 31 points on 11-of-18 FG in his second career start. He was on fire from 3-point range (6-of-8 from deep) and also contributed across the box score with seven rebounds, two assists and two steals. Most importantly he was a team-high plus-31, which helped the Celtics turn a close game at halftime into a second-half blowout.
Jayson Tatum gets aggressive in a career-night: With Kyrie Irving (quad) sidelined, someone had to step up as the primary option on offense. While Rozier led the way, Tatum set the tone early with his offense, attempting a career-high 19 shots on his way to a career-high 27 points. The No. 3 overall pick got back to his college scoring roots, scoring all 11 of his field goals from inside the arc during a very efficient evening. He also attempted a team-high five free throws.
Everyone is hurt and it doesn’t matter: Marcus Smart, Kyrie Irving, Shane Larkin
and
Marcus Morris
all missed Friday’s game and it didn’t matter against a lowly Hawks squad. The Celtics took the game over when they started playing defense in the second half and their starting lineup (all five players in double figures) carried the offensive load as that unit combined for 105 of Boston’s 119 points.
TURNING POINT
TWO UP
Rozier:
In his first two career starts, Rozier has averaged 24.0 points on 53.1 percent shooting from the field and 64.3 percent from 3-point range. He’s also added 9.0 rebounds and 6.0 assists per game over that stretch, easily the best stretch of his pro career.
Al Horford:
The veteran set the tone for the Celtics early in the second half by abusing Ersan Ilyasova in the post. He scored 12 of his 17 points after intermission on 5-of-7 shooting, which was all the more impressive given that it occurred over a total of 12 minutes.
TWO DOWN
Daniel Theis:
The 25-year-old German has been a pleasant surprise all season, but this was not one of his better performances. He scored four points on 1-of-6 shooting and was a team-worst minus-15.
Abdel Nader:
The swingman may be playing for his job right now as the Celtics explore options ahead of the trade deadline. While he had a career night in Wednesday’s win against the Knicks, he followed it up with a bit of a letdown against the Hawks. Nader scored just five points on 2-of-8 shooting from the field and struggled defensively against the wings on the Hawks. He probably can’t do much right now to save his roster spot anyway if a trade is made, but this night did not help his chances.
TOP PLAY
TWO TAKES B-ROBB WILL PROBABLY REGRET LATER
Aron Baynes is already hearing Greg Monroe’s footsteps:
Someone is going to lose some time in the minutes department when Greg Monroe arrives and Baynes is a main candidate on that front. After a subpar month of January, Baynes responded to the challenge on Friday night, playing his best game in weeks (11 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists in 23 minutes). He’ll be able to keep his job if he produces like that more regularly but the competition in the frontcourt is about to get mighty competitive.
A glimpse of Jayson Tatum as a number one option was fun to see:
The Hawks are terrible on defense so some of the numbers were inflated but the kind of aggressiveness we saw from Tatum on Friday night would be a regular occurrence during his rookie season if he wasn’t playing for such a good team. With all of the team’s chuckers (Irving, Smart, Morris) on the bench, Tatum had the green light to get his and did work from the midrange and in the paint. Just another promising sign of the future for the Celtics.
