NBA: Celtics lean on hustle plays, best rebounding game of season to beat Hawks
BOSTON Mass. — Jaylen Brown got some space, a head of steam, and switched to his left hand. He took one more dribble and switched back to his right hand as he flew over Clint Capela and threw it down on him.
Brown’s latest ferocious dunk was the highlight of another Celtics victory. But it’s what made that play happen that represented the night for the C’s. Moments before, Derrick White had missed a 3-pointer and the rebound went long. But Brown hustled after the ball and beat everyone to it.
Moments later, Brown was flexing with both of his arms.
The Celtics were outplayed, out-toughed, and out-hustled in almost every aspect of Friday’s loss to the Magic. Two nights later, the Celtics turned a hard lesson into a victory. Jayson Tatum scored 34 points and Jaylen Brown added 22 points to pace the Celtics, but it was those hustle plays, the small margins of the game that Joe Mazzulla always emphasizes that made the difference in a 113-103 victory over the Hawks.
“Those are the things that we have to fight to do all the time,” Mazzulla said. “It’s easier said than done, but that’s a recipe for winning.”
Sunday’s win was the type that Mazzulla has said since training camp that he wants to make a habit for these Celtics. Last season, they were too reliant on making 3-pointers to win games. They were 42-5 when shooting 35 percent or better from deep, and 15-20 when they shot below that mark.
Mazzulla recognized that the Celtics needed to create better habits, to find ways to win more consistently when the shots weren’t falling. One way was offensive rebounding and second-chance points.
So on Sunday, a night when they shot 29.7 percent from deep, they still won comfortably. Even on a night they were undermanned, without Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday, the Celtics leaned on hustle. On Friday, they had just four offensive rebounds. On Sunday, they had as many in the first quarter. They ultimately posted a season-high 58 rebounds, which included 18 offensive boards that resulted in 17 second-chance points. Neemias Queta came off the bench to make energy plays. He nearly had a double-double with seven points and 10 rebounds (six offensive) in 15 minutes. Al Horford was a monster on the glass with 15 boards.
It included one big one in the fourth quarter. The Hawks, who had trailed by as much as 20 in the third quarter, were threatening midway through the final period and had cut their deficit to nine. Sam Hauser missed a 3-pointer from the wing, but Horford didn’t give up on the play. He crashed from the corner, across the other side of the court and jumped over three Hawks to grab the rebound.
The second chance didn’t net any points for the Celtics, but it still made an impact.
“It was funny, me and Jaylen were standing at the scorer’s table when he went and got that and we both just looked at each other, and it was like, ‘How lucky we are to have this guy?’” Mazzulla said.
Added Brown: “Al just adds to winning. That play is just a small example of what Al brings to our team. ... It was a huge effort play, and those are the type of plays you need to win games like this.”
On the next sequence, Tatum stripped Bogdan Bogdanovic and forced a loose ball that Horford gobbled up. He sent it up court to Tatum, and the ball eventually found Dalano Banton for an easy dunk.
“It just gives us so much energy,” Tatum said of Horford’s hustle plays. “That’s contagious, the crowd feeds off of that, we feed off of that.”
The Celtics haven’t always played up to the standard they aspire to this season, especially when it comes to the toughness and hustle plays Mazzulla wants to see. But the 37-year-old Horford has seemed to bring that whenever he’s on the court. Sunday was the latest example.
“He sets the example every day, and sometimes guys like him can go under-appreciated, but we have to be able to show the way that guy wants to win,” Mazzulla said. “He set the mindset and that’s something that we’ve been a little inconsistent with, is our mindset, I would say overall. Our guys want to be great, they want to win, but our mindset has been a little inconsistent. But tonight, it felt like we had it back and we just got to fight for that.”
The Celtics led by 16 at halftime behind 13 offensive rebounds and 12 second-chance points, but seemed to lose their way again in the third. The Hawks went on a 16-3 run thanks to three triples from Bogdanovic that suddenly cut Boston’s lead to six. But the C’s responded with strong one-shot defense and toughness plays. In the first minute of the fourth, Queta grabbed a steal before Derrick White’s offensive rebound led to a Sam Hauser 3-pointer – a sequence representative of the Celtics’ night.
Tatum brought the Celtics home with 13 of his 34 points in the fourth as they held off a late surge from Trae Young. But it was those hustle plays, especially the rebounds, that were the ultimate difference. It was the vision Mazzulla has been looking for.
“I think you try, especially in the first 25 games, to get great at a bunch of things and you emphasize them and as you go through the season, ‘This is important for this stretch of games, this is important, what can you hang on to throughout the entire year?’” Mazzulla said. “And so, I thought maybe as a staff, we didn’t emphasize them enough. So today, that was one of the big keys for us was, ‘Can we get back to our corner crashing?’ And our guys did a great job of executing.”
