Boston Celtics: Analyzing the C’s play against other top title contenders

Title Contender No. 2) Los Angeles Lakers

Season Series: Split 1-1

Core-Five Per Game Averages:

• Kemba Walker — 20.0 points, 7.0 assists, 4.0 rebounds, 62 FG%, 50 3FG%
• Jayson Tatum — 34.0 points, 2.5 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 58 FG%, 60 3FG%
• Jaylen Brown — 20.0 points, 4.0 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 42 FG%, 33 3FG%
• Gordon Hayward — 13.0 points, 7.0 assists, 7.0 rebounds, 41 FG%, 25 3FG%
• Marcus Smart — 11.5 points, 3.5 assists, 5.0 rebounds, 37 FG%, 33 3FG%

We continue on the trend of the Boston Celtics splitting the season series in LA, this time against the Lakers at one game apiece. Similar to their game against the Clippers, one of said matchups was decided in the final seconds of action. Unlike against the Clippers, however, one ended in an absolute route in favor of the Cs.

Despite going through early struggles in their January 20th outing in Beantown — following the tip, LeBron James threw a half-court lob to JaVale McGee before the scoreboard graphic was even present — the Celtics, led by the excellence of Jayson Tatum, Kemba Walker, and Jaylen Brown (combined for 67 points, 15 assists, and 13 rebounds) ended up claiming the lead by the end of the first quarter and never relented from that point on.

Boston won this matchup by a whopping 32 points (139-107).

Interestingly enough, however, though this was obviously the game the Celtics won during their regular-season series, it was their sequel matchup that seems to be the most memorable in the minds of fans due to two very significant reasons: the officiating played a massive role in the game’s outcome, and Tatum showed glimpses of pure superstardom.

Deemed as the best game of his career, the first time All-Star put up unbelievable numbers of 41 points, five boards, two assists, and two blocks on 60 percent shooting from the floor and 57 percent shooting from deep. In short, the man seemingly could not be contained by any player on the court.

In the end, it would appear that the only people who could stop Tatum from coming out of this game victorious were the officiating crew. In his recap from that fateful night, Andrew Dilorio, as he always does, gave his best synopsis on the events that transpired late in the game:

"In the last minute of the game, the referees took over, angering many Celtics fans. First, they called a foul on Daniel Theis when he was nowhere near the play, forcing Stevens to use his challenge to change the foul call to Jaylen Brown to keep Theis from fouling out. Then, a 5+ minute review was held, trying to figure out if a ball tipped out of bounds was off of Anthony Davis or any of the Celtics players. Despite multiple angles showing it was off of Davis’ pinky, the referees upheld the call, citing there was not enough evidence to overturn it. At this point, James made a fall away jumper over Jaylen Brown to put the Lakers up by one. Then, on the next Celtics’ possession, the referees swallowed their whistle on an arguable foul on Jayson Tatum from Caldwell-Pope, and then called a technical foul on Brad Stevens in the last 15 seconds of the game. Luckily, Anthony Davis missed the free throw, but the refs should never call a technical foul that late in a close game. It makes the game about the referees rather than the actual basketball players, which is what fans pay to see. In the end, you can argue about these calls and if they were egregious or not. But the Celtics have a right to be angry about the sloppiness down the stretch from the referees. That’s not to say they didn’t have their fair share of chances — they failed to execute down the stretch as well. However, the officiating in the last minute of the game put a sour taste in the mouth of many fans, something that tainted an otherwise great game."

Similar to their loss against the Clippers, Boston’s lone defeat to the Lakers was well within the realm of possibility of being flipped on its head had a few more things — namely, calls from the officiating crew — gone their way.

With this in mind, it’s evident that the Celtics are every bit as capable of beating LA as virtually any other team found within ESPN’s top-5 projections.