Sunday night, the Boston Celtics managed to halt their latest losing streak at just two games as they were able to finish off their two-game road trip with a rather fluid victory against divisional rival, the Toronto Raptors.
Able to finish out every quarter with a positive point differential, the shamrocks wound up finishing the night with a 12-point advantage with a final score reading 109-97, thus thrusting them back above a .500 record at 11-10.
It was an odd night for Boston’s franchise cornerstone Jayson Tatum, who, though has made his mark on the league as being a top-notch scorer, served as a high-end facilitator for his squad, dishing out a game-high 10 dimes.
While his scoring was certainly missed, it was a tremendous sight to see him shift his focus on making an impact in other areas of the game, which is something that the great ones tend to do when they’re off in a specific sector of their bag of tricks.
Aside from Tatum, however, the Cs had quite a number of players that managed to make their mark on this game in a positive way. Now yes, the usual suspects such as Jaylen Brown (16 points on 50 percent shooting from deep) and Al Horford (17 points & 11 rebounds) obviously did their thing, but there were several others who went about and outperformed initial expectations heading in, no matter how high or low.
Unfortunately, as has been virtually all season, despite the fact that the majority of the team’s players performed admirably, there were still some who ultimately ended the night in a disappointing fashion.
With this in mind, today we at the Houdini go about and pinpoint 1 stud and 1 dud from Boston’s latest victory over the Toronto Raptors:
Boston Celtics stud: Marcus Smart
It’s undeniable that Marcus Smart had himself a slow start to the 2021-22 campaign, but these last few games have been a nice step in the right direction for the veteran and Sunday may have been his best game yet.
Showing off his Swiss Army Man style of play, the 27-year-old was an absolute menace for the Cs in virtually every way imaginable.
As is always expected, Smart was an absolute pest on the less glamorous side of the ball, playing tough and physical defense the entire night and, while his five personal fouls may not be ideal, at least two of them were undeniably bogus calls by the refs, one of which being the “push off” with 1.2 seconds left in the second, which was simply atrocious and a real Oscar-winning acting job by Precious Achiuwa.
On top of this, however, the eighth-year pro played an excellent game on the offensive side of the floor, putting up a team-high 21-points (many of which came from Tatum’s dimes) to go along with eight rebounds (three offensive), and six assists (many of which were truly fantastic dishes) on 43.8 shooting from the floor and 40 percent shooting from deep.
These past three games the point guard finds himself boasting averages of 18 points, 7.3 assists, six rebounds, and a steal per game which, frankly, are numbers many envisioned he would be putting up heading into the year.
Nights like Sunday show just how fun this team can be when Marcus Smart is in synch.
Boston Celtics dud: Payton Pritchard
2021-22 has not yet proven to be the year of the Boston Celtics sophomores, and perhaps no player has been more of a let-down than point guard Payton Pritchard.
Yes, some could argue the biggest letdown of this aforementioned bunch is Aaron Nesmith, who found himself coming into the season with a tremendous amount of hype, but the wing was always a potential hit-or-miss after enduring such a lackluster rookie season.
Pritchard, on the other hand, at least had a solid year one with the Cs and, because of this, many expected him to either continue the same level of play or, even better, improve upon it in year two.
Unfortunately, however, this has not proven to be the case, as the 23-year-old has looked like a shell of his rookie self, and Sunday’s loss served as a solid example of this.
Playing in over 10 minutes of action, Pritchard failed to register a single counting stat outside of one turnover.
He missed all three of his attempts from the field, two of which were launched from deep, while also struggling to stay with his assignments on defense.
The second-year guard is at his best when he’s attacking the paint yet, unfortunately, it appeared as though every time he touched the ball on the night he was focusing on getting rid of it as soon as possible.
Perhaps in time Payton Pritchard will get his mojo back and, in turn, start contributing similarly to how he did last season. Unfortunately, however, he has simply not been the same and Sunday was yet another forgettable showing for the young baller.