Tonight’s column is brought to you by ipecac. Ipecac - when you have ingested poison, but watching Celtics-Bulls as a remedy isn’t an option.
TD Garden is generally one of the league’s better environments. Yes, the jumbotron is used to get fans to cheer and chant, but it’s often not necessary. The crowd is generally invested in the games, and they have a good feel for when the team needs a boost.
But it was so quiet inside the arena for most of the night that I swear you could hear individual conversations. Maybe fans were sitting on their hands to keep them warm inside a frigid building, but the Celtics and Bulls gave fans nothing for a large portion of the night, other than shooting just as cold as the air seeping in from the outside.
“I think we kind of understood going coming into the game, like, how tough a game it was going to be, mentally and physically, just coming off a long road trip, coming from the West Coast, practically be on the plane all day,” Anfernee Simons admitted. “And we knew that it was a possibility that we might struggle a little bit offensively, but I think defensively, through the most of the first half, I think we played great. We were getting stops and making it a game. And I think that's what helped us.”
It might be a bit generous to suggest the Celtics defense was the primary driver of Chicago’s empty offensive possessions, but misses are misses, and the Celtics were able to end most of the Bulls’ empty possessions by clearing the rebounds. And where Chicago was unable to give themselves more than one bite at the apple, the Celtics were piling up second chances left and right.
“They didn't look very good out there, but they played hard,” Joe Mazzulla said after the game. “I was not pleased with how they looked, but I was pleased with how they tried and how they played and how they competed. But they looked relatively tired.”
They do get marks for fighting through the fatigue. No one goes on a business trip to five cities over 10 days, flies home across the country, and then walks into work Monday rarin’ to go. But they did what they needed to do.
“I mean, they’re just relentless in terms of attacking the glass,”