Ever find yourself walking somewhere, maybe through a parking garage or a dark street in an unfamiliar place, where you find yourself constantly turning your head thinking you heard or saw something?
Now you know how the Golden State Warriors felt trying to get to the rim.
Robert Williams, parked on the weak side and seemingly out of the play, came flying across the lane for block after block, sending back Warriors shots and sending the Boston offense running off in transition.
“There’s a reason they’re number one in the league in defensive efficiency,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said. “We did miss some open ones but I think when you play a team that’s that physical and long, the open ones that you get sometimes aren’t as comfortable, because you feel their defense. I thought we felt their defense early, they did a hell of a job getting into us and when we did have open looks, we didn’t knock them down, and that’s what keyed their first half surge.”
The Celtics imposed their will on the Warriors, finishing with a defensive rating of 95.7 for the game, which isn’t bad for a team whose rating was up above 107 for the month so far.
“Set the tone from the start, physicality was great,” Ime Udoka said. “You obviously look at the results, 17, 15, 19 in the first, second and fourth quarter. Other than that third quarter, I felt our physicality was great. We want to impose that on guys from the start, we wanted to do that and start our road trip off right. If you can make teams start complaining, you know you are in a good spot.”
It should come as no shock that Draymond Green was the complainer in chief for the Warriors, picking up a technical foul in a complaint so demonstrative that it would have gotten most other players thrown out. For once, it was Boston inflicting psychological damage rather than exhibiting it.
This was another playoff-style game, where the whistles were a bit harder to come by. For three out of the four quarters, the Celtics took advantage of that by not letting a fast, finesse team like the Warriors ever get comfortable.
“Physicality, communication, all night we were physical,” Jaylen Brown said. “From 1 to 15, into guys, trying to ride them out, not letting them get space, not letting them feel comfortable, and that’s what we want to do. We want to be the aggressor, and I think we did that.”
The Celtics continue to show what they're capable of in big moments like this. Coming off the loss to Dallas (who, by the way, beat Brooklyn, on the road, on a Spencer Dinwiddie 3-pointer just before the Celtics game started), and a couple of games where the defense just looked a step slow, the Celtics proved that a little proper motivation can push them to pretty nice heights.
The Celtics activity shows up in smaller ways, like their 16 deflections on the night, about four more than usual. The Celtics also contested 51 of Golden State’s 86 shots, led by 11 from Robert Williams. When they put their minds to it, they're incredibly different to score on.
“We wanted to bounce back,” Brown said. “Felt like we dropped one in Dallas, didn’t play as well, and we wanted to come out and play better. We played better than we did in Dallas, but no way our best game offensively. Another great defensive performance from us.”
Boston has now put themselves in position to come out of this four-game trip with at least three wins, which they’ll easily get if they continue to play this level of defense. They switched, and helped, and swarmed the Warriors into their lowest-scoring half of the season. They let up a little in the third and it immediately served as a reminder that only maximum effort will result in elite results.
But they fixed things in the fourth, getting back to what got them the early lead, once again flexing their defensive muscles to put the game away.
“We have the talent and we have the guys, we have the potential, we have the desire too, the heart and the work ethic,” Marcus Smart said. “Our confidence is really high, rightfully so. Especially the way we started the year and where we're at now. But we understand that it's nothing to celebrate about. We still got a lot of work to do and we're the team doing it.”