The best defense being played at TD Garden on Wednesday night was by security for the visit by Prince William and Princess Catherine. The royals are visiting Boston (if they're looking for their tea, I’ve got some bad news for them) and decided to take in a game at the Garden, but no one on the Celtics seemed to be fazed.
“It was just a regular game to me,” said Jaylen Brown.
“I am not a big royal family guy,” said Derrick White.
Joe Mazzulla said he only knows about one royal family: “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”
Actually, I’m wrong about my opening line. The Celtics played some incredible defense against the TV reporter sent to this game to get a fun royals story. She tried twice to get some kind of sound bite for her story and got shut down. If the Celtics treated Miami like that, they’d have won by 50.
If anything, the Celtics were channeling the feelings of the home crowd. There were more than a few boos when their royal highnesses were announced. And when William and Kate walked off at halftime, someone started a short, but loud “USA! USA!” chant.
I guess there are still some hard feelings.
But the Celtics, though unimpressed, were gracious hosts, treating the Prince and Princess of Wales to a whale of an offensive performance, none better than that of Jayson Tatum.
Once again, Tatum found his 49 points the efficient way, only needing 25 field goal attempts to get there. Maybe just as impressive is that Boston was +29 with Tatum on the floor in a game they won by 13.
“A lot of the stuff he does opens plays for others as well,” Mazzulla said. “There's about 15 or 18 points a game he's getting just because of what he's doing without the ball. I think it's just as much about that. How do you play because you're a great player or how do you make the people around you better?”
Tatum has exploded offensively this season, and it was on full display against Miami. He got to the rim … again. He got to the free throw line … again. But the difference this time is that he went 8-12 from deep, 66.7%, in a season where he came in shooting below league average.
“They went zone for the majority of the game … Jayson found a lot of those gaps and was able to be aggressive and make a lot of plays for us,” Jaylen Brown said. “A night like this, you just gotta keep finding him or the ball keeps finding him on its own. And he shot the lights out today.”
If you go by how many shots were taken during the playing time, Brown actually shot slightly more often than Tatum (18 shots in 28 minutes vs 25 shots in 39 minutes). That speaks to how much Tatum spread the offense around even though he was clearly feeling it.
“I feel like that’s how it’s been most of the season. I think that’s kind of how we play,” Tatum said. “And they were in zone so that kind of led to a lot of two-on-one actions, finding open man, just being in the right spot, especially in the first couple of minutes of the game, just shooting in rhythm.”
More than anything, Tatum’s night might show how malleable Boston’s offense really is. If they need a star to go off and carry them, they can get it. If they need a one-two punch, they have it (Brown’s 26 points on 18 shots was pretty efficient itself). If they need the supporting cast to pepper an opponent too keyed in on Tatum or Brown, they can find that, too.
The Celtics had some lulls against Miami and it let their shooters get hot and challenge the Celtics up until the final few minutes, but the offense was there to bail the Celtics out as usual. The Celtics turned the ball over 18 times, giving them just 83 shots to score 134 points. That's a comical number.
But they just keep on rolling, this time with Tatum in an ungodly zone. With a prince on the sidelines, Tatum was the king of the court, and if the keeps this up, he could become Celtics royalty.