The Boston Celtics emerged Wednesday night with another win under their belt, keeping things simple and blowing out the Cleveland Cavaliers by 25 to improve to 42-13 on the season as we get ready for the All-Star Brea…
Wait, that was a playoff game? Surely you can’t be serious.
You’re telling me that the game I just watched brought the Celtics one step closer to winning the NBA Championship? That totally chill, comically stressless and frankly somewhat relaxing basketball game actually counted for one of the 16 wins the Celtics need to take home the title? Really?
What a breath of fresh air. What a glorious change of pace. What a wonderful way to kick off the second round with a completely unremarkable obliteration of a team that was ripe for unremarkable obliteration. I still have plenty of notes, but they’re the “listen you killed it but here’s how to go up even another level” type notes, not the “if you keep messing around we might run into trouble” type.
Many of you may have already noticed that Jiu-jitsu apprentice Adam is off today, getting dental surgery probably as a result of having to fight off hordes of bandits and assassins as he leaped through the rooftops of Birmingham like some sort of ninja Mary Poppins. And per his instructions, I will conclude the introduction by saying the Celtics formed a perfect fist—thumb under the knuckles rather than wrapped in the fingers—and punched the Cavaliers directly in the mouth. Let’s extract some teeth, shall we?
1. If Derrick White is going to play like this for the rest of the postseason, the Celtics are going to win the NBA Finals
I couldn’t mince words here: if Derrick White is going to be this going forward, it’s over for the rest of the league.
White has a 100 percent approval rating among Celtics fans. Any concerns about the trade that brought him here have long been assuaged, but White hasn’t just broken through whatever ceiling the NBA had prescribed for him: he personally rebuilt it 40 stories higher and then shattered it with a single stone.
He is and has been an excellent basketball player, but people are kidding themselves if they said they knew this would happen. In the playoffs, White is averaging 22.8 points per game while shooting 57 percent from the floor, 50 percent from three and 90 percent from the free throw line. Six games is a real sample size too, and his splits over the last three are even crazier.
But more than stats, he’s got the look. It’s like someone flipped a switch on his hidden control panel that just read “DESTROY” in all capital letters. He plays with zero hesitation, zero fear, and sometimes even disbelief that these guys think they can stop him.
This is (British soccer announcer voice) just magisterial. He’s completely jammed in the corner with five seconds on the shoot clock, and just speed bursts to the center, pulls out the smoothest snatch-back you’ve ever seen and laces his seventh three of the night. Greg Anthony just laughs it off, in complete disbelief at how hard White is owning these guys.
I was banking on Tatum being great this postseason. I was counting on Jaylen Brown too, and wrote after a loss earlier this season that the Celtics were not championship contenders without Kristaps Porzingis. I needed all three of those guys to be Things 1, 2 and 3 that propelled the Celtics passed their prior limitations.
But I wouldn’t say I was counting on White, mostly because he was such an unselfish and complementary player. I didn’t need to worry about him because I knew he’d always do the right thing, and so I focused on what versions of Tatum, Brown and Porzingis the Celtics would get. But White has grabbed the reigns and demanded I count on him too, and I officially am.
It’s sounding like Porzingis will be back sometime this postseason, and if White can keep this pain train rolling, nobody can beat the Celtics. Three All-Star-caliber offensive options is destructive enough, but if White can make it four consistently? Forget it.
2. Jaylen Brown. That’s it. That’s the takeaway
Brown was cooking dudes like he was one of those Hibachi chefs spinning an egg on his spatula and creating an onion volcano. He clearly understood that this Cavaliers team was already shaky, and nobody causes earthquakes quite like a locked-in Brown.
He’s one of the strongest wings in the league, and didn’t wait for a moment if he saw either Darius Garland or Donovan Mitchell on an island. Brown went straight at their chests over and over until they had to overcommit to the drive, leaving him free to hit four of six three point attempts, and one of the misses was a half court shot.
Brown also convinced me the Celtics were going to win with 9:59 left in the first quarter. The score was 7-2, with all seven Celtics points from Brown. But more importantly, four of those came at the free throw line.
If the Celtics have a singular offensive weakness, it is Brown’s free-throw shooting. He is mechanically inconsistent and shoots a pedestrian 70 percent from the stripe, often missing badly off the front of the rim or way off to the side. But the brutally physical way he plays invites lots of fouls, and so he finds himself at the line more than I’m usually comfortable with.
But Brown started off the first quarter perfect from the line, converting all four attempts and looking calm doing it. The ball bounced in like it was the world’s most relaxed pinball machine, and from therein I knew it: Jaylen Brown was in set-the-tone mode.
Brown has a tendency to start off games like the first quarter is the last one he’ll ever play. When he’s in early offense mode, the defense panics and can’t comprehend what’s happening to them. All the while, Brown notches up his defense to 11 to make things as uncomfortable as possible from the outset.
The free throws were a metaphor for the rest of his night, as he dominated from sun up to sun down, never once seriously prevented from getting to the paint at will. It’s part of what made the game so relaxed: Brown couldn’t be stopped, so no Cavaliers run would survive for long.
3. The Swiss cheese Cavaliers
I like Swiss cheese on turkey sandwiches. I think it has an interesting flavor profile and brings something to the table that other cheeses don’t. There’s an odd sweetness to it that you can’t get out of cheddar or Gouda, and it’s the only cheese I’ve found that actually pairs well with mustard or some sort of aioli.
But we’re not talking about cheese; we’re talking about basketball. And in the world of metaphors, Swiss cheese is known for one thing and one thing only: holes.
The Cavaliers are not like the Heat. On paper, they have a very talented roster with an All-NBA leader in Mitchell and two potentially-but-not-definitely great young players in Darius Garland and Evan Mobley. That’s a solid flavor profile for your NBA team, but my oh my is it rife with holes.
Tristan Thompson and Marcus Morris—impactful playoff performers if it was like… 2016 or something—both played first quarter minutes in the year of our lord 2024. Max Strus and Caris Levert, recipients of the illustrious Sam LaFrance “why on earth do we have to play these guys again” article on Monday, combined for 4-14 shooting and nine total points. Garland struggled shooting all night, and Mobley is just way too passive offensively. Mitchell took 25 shots and scored 33 points, but by the time his twelfth make went down the game was beyond over.
Also, check out Sam Merrill:
I have no real bone to pick with this guy, but it’s objectively funny that a guy who took 90 percent of his shots from three-point range this year finds himself attempting floaters in a playoff game. It went about as well as you could expect, and nothing quite exemplifies the Swiss cheesiness of this team quite like that shot when the Cavaliers were completely still in the game.
4. What’s the plan Stan… I mean J.B.?
I alluded to this in the open, but wasn’t that just such a chill game to watch? It was so unlike the Miami Heat games in that at no point was I worried the apocalypse would arrive without warning. It totally still could have arrived, but I knew I was going to get some sort of scary-sounding alert on my phone reading “CELTICS APOCALYPSE IMMINENT; SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER” accompanied by a super annoying beeping sound.
I’m no longer sure I’m ever going to get that alert, because the Cavaliers got so uniformly waxed that I’m starting to doubt their ability to win a game, let alone the series. They didn’t play a generationally bad game, just a normal bad one. It’s not like they turned the ball over that much or committed some outlandish number of fouls. The Celtics were just in a totally different league.
With Miami, the same was true, but I always knew that they had a plan that would give them a chance to win. It may be a really low chance, such as needing to hit a franchise record number of threes, but it was still definitely some sort of chance. Head Coach Erik Spoelstra and Co. always figured out how to extract some sort of advantage out of the smallest crevices, and for that I legitimately do give the Heat a lot of credit.
But I’m just not sure Head Coach J.B. Bickerstaff or the rest of the Cavaliers have a plan. This is a team whose superstar in Mitchell basically has one foot out the door already, and the future in Garland and Mobley is definitely not right now. It felt like I was watching a boat race between a two-person row boat and a 35-oar-powered Viking warship. Yeah, we’re all rowing, but what chance does this other boat actually have here?
The Cavaliers were objectively playing basketball, but they are going to have to come up with something else if they want a chance at this. They aren’t built to muck up games or out-physical the Celtics, nor do they have a history of innovative offensive or defensive tactics. Mitchell is capable of scoring 70 if he has to, but even that may prove insufficient.
All in all, it’s going to be a tough sell for Cleveland. And if this is what the series is, it’s also an easy viewing experience for me.
5. Luke Kornet: defensive weapon
This was one of Luke Kornet’s two blocks in a two-minute stretch in the first quarter, rejecting Mitchell and Isaac Okoro as they attempted to go after not-Kristaps-Porzingis guarding the paint. But this is not the Kornet of old; this is a reborn defensive asset.
Porzingis and Kornet bring very similar defensive skill sets to the table, with the former just being a much better athlete. Kornet has very below-average foot speed, but it’s not like he’s being asked to guard Anthony Davis or Nikola Jokic out here. He’s parked on Evan Mobley, someone whose offensive game we will get to later, but for now, just know he isn’t the most dynamic scorer ever.
This allows Kornet to play to his strength: standing in and around the paint and using his gargantuan size to swallow up over-eager rack attacks. I’ll admit it: Kornet was an abhorrent defender early in the season, routinely getting exposed for poor positioning and timing by craftier offensive players. I even advocated for a trade deadline addition to fill the Kornet spot.
But consider this my official retraction. He has settled down defensively and really figured out how to maximize his impact. I am completely comfortable whenever he’s on the court, and I have zero reservations about his playing time going forward. There are a few bigs left in the playoffs that could give him issues, but the Celtics have so much backup to help him I’m not overly worried.
6. Sam Hauser’s beautiful box score
This is an homage to my friend and colleague Bill Sy’s series of articles that highlight the artistic beauty of certain box scores. Within score lines and stats, sometimes something peculiar shines through. Even more rarely, that peculiarity is actually naturally formed art, manifesting in a slew of numbers across the silver screen.
With that said, here are Sam Hauser’s statistical contributions in Game 1 in his 17 minutes:
0 points, 0-1 shooting, 0 assists, 1 rebound, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 0 turnovers, 1 foul. Game high plus/minus of +22.
These are my favorite lines. Hauser attempted one three in garbage time but otherwise was just straight chilling out there on the court for 17 minutes, grabbing one rebound, playing some solid defense and yet securing the highest plus/minus of the night. That’s all in a day’s work if you ask me.
Hauser is a fascinating player. He can be absolutely critical or totally superfluous, depending on the night. The Celtics got outrageous production from both Brown and White, as well as some serious scoring out of Payton Pritchard. And even with his shooting struggles, Tatum still accumulated 18 points. With the Cavaliers completely unable to do anything, Hauser was just not needed, given the slew of options the Celtics were working with.
My brother is a mechanical engineer, and he always tells me about “factors of safety” on things like bridges and planes, or basically how things are built in ways that even if several critical systems fail or break, there are many levels of backup-safety built into the design. Hauser is like Boston’s backup-backup-backup plan, and it usually takes a lot of things going wrong for him to put his mark on the game.
But that’s not bad, it’s amazing. Any engineer will tell you that a high factor of safety is not redundant or unnecessary; it’s actually what keeps us alive. Hauser might just save the Celtics once or twice this postseason.
7. What does Evan Mobley even do?
This is probably a bit of a rude way to put this, but I’m not the most sure what Evan Mobley is actually doing out there other than grabbing rebounds and activating a post-scoring bag once the game is already over. And beyond all that, I actually think he was a net negative for the Cavaliers last night.
He scored 17 points on the night, which isn’t terrible for a perennial All-Defensive candidate. But he scored 10 of them in the fourth quarter with the game all but sealed, and it wasn’t really a big deal for the Celtics when he started converting post hooks with the Cavaliers down by 20 with under ten minutes to go.
I’m always focused on how teams go about generating points because I think it says a lot about their chances of actually winning. Last round, the Heat became unable to get any other shot than a Bam Adebayo post turnaround, which—even if he made it—was not a fast or substantial enough point-generator to keep up with the Celtics.
Mobley being a complete non-factor on the perimeter is untenable for the Cavaliers. He is a special defender, but the Celtics have enough spacing to effectively neutralize his game-wrecking potential. That leaves his offensive game, which has shades of Deandre Ayton-level passivity and a real unwillingness to shot from the outside.
If Mobley was their third or fourth option, this would be great. But in order for the Cavaliers to actually win, he needs to be their second-best all-around player behind Mitchell and clean up messes in the paint on defense, something he just isn’t equipped to do.
Here, Mobley brings the idea of help defense but doesn’t actually help out the overmatched Okoro in any real way. Sure, he stares daggers into Brown as he muscles through his defender, but Mobley has the length and skills to eliminate all of Brown’s finishing angles here. But he just… doesn’t.
I’m curious to see how this develops throughout the series, because if the Celtics have figured out how to remove Mobley as a defensive presence and wreck him offensively, the Cavaliers do not have much recourse.
8. I forgot Kristaps Porzingis was injured
I’m being 100 percent serious here: I forgot he was injured. I honestly forgot he was even on the team.
Nothing explains how well the Celtics played more than this. Normally when Porzingis is out, there are about 37 instances of me thinking “we coulda really used Porzingis there…” or “offense is getting stale, we need Porzingis.” But this time, it was just sunshine and lollipops.
We don’t have much information on his timeline, but Head Coach Joe Mazzulla said on “Zolak and Bertrand” that the injury was perhaps not as bad as initially feared. Porzingis seems like he’s in good spirits as well, still a fixture of the Celtics’ practice facility and keeping his persistent smile all over his face.
But the Celtics didn’t need him at all in Game 1. They so didn’t need him I forgot that he was even ever needed. Of course, once I remembered, I felt extraordinarily stupid and then felt bad for my Porzingis erasure, but I assure you this is a compliment all around. The guys have his back and are elevating accordingly. I’m sure if you asked him, Porzingis would say that—while he is pushing hard to get back and plans to—the Celtics are more than capable of winning a title even without him
But before anyone goes crazy and say the Celtics should just sit him intentionally—even if he is ready before the end of this series—let’s remember that staying aggressive is how you win championships, not by playing overly safe. If Porzingis is ready and the Celtics doctors and training staff says he’s good to go, he should go.
9. The ideal Jrue Holiday game
Let me tell you about the perfect Holiday performance: completely complimentary, defensively dominant, and stat-sheet-stuffing. Would you believe me if I said all that alliteration was unintentional?
Holiday played exactly the game that the Celtics needed him to play. Corner threes, exploiting mismatches, and putting Cavaliers’ role players in a defensive prison cell all night. He wasn’t particularly offensively productive but he put in a solid 14 points on what I thought was an excellent shot selection. Here’s a great example:
Holiday isn’t always the smoothest finisher or offensive creator. In that sense, he’s a lot like Marcus Smart: really strong for a guard and able to overpower smaller ones like Garland, but not quite the gifted professional scorer that other physical guards like Russell Westbrook and James Harden were in their primes.
Holiday’s advantage, though, comes from his age and experience. He knows when a guy is too small to guard him one-on-one, and when he sees that nobody is coming to save Garland, he eases into a fade away with zero pomp or circumstance. Garland looks like he got a good contest, but at the NBA level, that was about as bothersome as a leaf landing on your shoulder. Like, yeah, cool, here’s a leaf… I’m still going to make this shot, though.
Holiday will almost certainly make an All-Defensive team, given his strong results in Defensive Player of the Year voting, which will be a nice recognition for his impact on this Celtics team. Keeping it simple yet keeping it impactful. That’s the Holiday bag.
10. What is the definition of “stealing a game”? (PLEASE ANSWER IN COMMENTS)
Ok, so. I really tried to give you guys my A game with the other nine takeaways, because I need a favor here on number ten.
My friends and I got in a completely overblown argument yesterday about the definition of “stealing a game” in the NBA playoffs, spurred by one of my friends strongly disagreeing with people arguing that the Minnesota Timberwolves “stole” Game 1 against the Denver Nuggets simply because it was in Denver.
In his estimation, the Timberwolves led for most of that game and didn’t make some improbable last-second comeback. Nor did they come in as extreme underdogs, and so you can absolutely not say they “stole” the game by any definition.
I disagree. I think that in the world of NBA vernacular, “to steal a playoff game” can be as simple as winning a game on the road. Should the Celtics go to win Game 3 in Cleveland, I’d argue they still “stole” the game from Cleveland for no other reason than it was on their home floor. The Celtics will probably be 15-point favorites in that game, but it’s still—by definition—“stealing.”
It may not make logical sense since, because the Celtics are overwhelming favorites, how can they “steal” a game most people thought they already had? But I think this is just a thing people say, changing the definition by the force of historical use. Here’s an example:
Q: “So, what’s the Celtics ideal path through the series?”
A: “Well, I’d love a sweep, but as long as we hold serve in Games 1 and 2 and steal one of the next two in Cleveland we can have it back in Boston for the closeout. That should work fine.”
Please, please, please sound off in the comments about this debate. Can someone rightly say that a game was stolen merely because it was won on the road? Or does it have to be an improbable win and/or a last-minute comeback? I assure you this is of critical importance to figure out, as the fate of NBA playoff discourse as we know it hangs in the balance.
