And just when you may have felt as though we could be inching closer to seeing the white flags being waved, the Boston Celtics have you second-guessing yourself.
After having endured a truly heartless defeat against the Atlanta Hawks earlier in the week, the Cs came out swinging Friday night as they handed the star-studded Los Angeles Lakers their ninth loss of the season.
A tightly contested battle initially, as LA led 61-60 heading into the half, Boston ultimately downed LeBron James and co. in a crushing fashion, as Frank Vogel pulled his starters with around four minutes still remaining in the game and, by the final buzzer, Ime Udoka’s squad finished with a 22 point advantage with the final score reading 130-108.
How the shamrocks managed to pull a 180 type of performance after their prior outing against Atlanta is truly remarkable, and a ton of credit has to be given to franchise cornerstone, Jayson Tatum.
Playing easily his best game of the season thus far, the budding superstar wound up leading all scorers with 37 points dropped to go along with 11 boards, three steals, two assists, and a block on 50 percent shooting from the floor and 44 percent shooting from deep.
Now, while we could talk about Tatum’s excellence for hours, we must also be fair to those around him who gave the wing some much-needed aid throughout, as this game saw several top-notch performances from Boston’s supporting cast.
That said, it wouldn’t be a true Celtics game if there weren’t a few let-downs along the way.
In an effort to shed light on both of these fields, we at the Houdini will now pinpoint 1 stud and 1 dud from the C’s statement victory of the Los Angeles Lakers: