And just when you thought this season couldn’t get more disappointing for the Boston Celtics…
Now, yes Wednesday night’s game actually was quite an exhilarating contest from start to finish, with the score being tightly contested from the opening tip to the final buzzer.
Unfortunately for the C’s, however, they were often found on the trailing end looking to catch up throughout the exhibition and, though they put forth a valiant effort, the San Antonio Spurs managed to hang on to their lead by the time the final buzzer sounded, squeaking away with a 99-97 victory thanks largely to a rimmed-out last-second layup attempt by Jaylen Brown.
With this loss, Boston now sinks even lower down the standings out in the Eastern Conference, boasting just an 18-20 record through their first 38 games played.
That said, though they dropped the ball in this heartbreaker, as mentioned earlier the outing actually was rather exciting and saw many positives from the shamrocks, particularly from the Jays who, combined, put up 49 points and 14 rebounds while swatting three shots.
Sadly, these efforts were not enough to give the team their third win in a row for, despite their high-end production some of their teammates ultimately could not hold their own themselves.
As one can already tell based on the end result of the contest, outside of a select few individuals there were numerous players who didn’t play their best brand of basketball and, to us, inadvertently contributed to the team’s demise.
In regard to their latest defeat, today we at HH pinpoint 1 stud and 1 dud performer from Boston’s down to the wire game against San Antonio:
Boston Celtics stud: Marcus Smart
Over his past several contests, Marcus Smart has managed to find his groove on a consistent basis where, in turn, he has been on an absolute tear and Wednesday night’s performance was simply yet another stellar all-around outing for Boston’s heart and soul performer.
Right from the jump, the 27-year-old was seemingly out on a mission to get his fellow teammates involved on the offensive side of the ball, dishing out one gorgeous dish after another (sadly, many were not converted, but this was no fault of Smart’s) while also taking and making smart attempts of his own along the way.
Logging a total of 33 minutes, the point guard finished the night off with an impressive log-line of 14 points, six assists, five rebounds (three of which being key offensive boards), three steals, and a block on 50 percent shooting from both the floor and from downtown.
From his obvious efforts in the distribution game to his famous not-found-on-the-stat-sheet contributions of diving on the floor for loose balls and numerous saving errant passes and deflected balls from going out of bounds Marcus Smart’s presence was felt all over this game.
Unfortunately, the Boston Celtics couldn’t find a way to secure the ‘W’, but that was certainly not the polarizing guard’s fault.
Boston Celtics dud: Al Horford
It’s sad to say, but there were a few potential candidates that we felt were deserving of being deemed the “dud” of Wednesday night’s game against the Spurs. Ultimately, however, we opted to go with Al Horford here, and, frankly, we feel as though we made the right decision.
Throughout his reunion campaign with the Boston Celtics, the veteran has managed to provide truly beneficial contributions to the ball club on a nightly basis, be it found on the stat sheet or simply when on the hardwood when he’s providing his presence as a seasoned and experienced leader.
Against San Antonio, however, we’re only slightly kidding when we say we forgot he was even playing despite the fact that he wound up registering 26 rather useless minutes for the C’s (what makes this statement a bit more interesting is the fact that we actually could not find any photos of him from the game on Getty at the time of this publishing).
Now yes, he did go on to surprisingly drop five dimes during the game, but the vast majority of them (three, to be exact) were more so stellar makes from a hot Jaylen Brown rather than impressive and difficult dimes dropped from the big himself.
Aside from this, despite taking the fifth-most attempts on the team Horford finished with the worst shooting percentage of anyone who took a shot, converting on just 28 percent of his takes while going 0-3 from deep.
A bigger showing, particularly in the scoring department could have really been a big help for Boston Wednesday.
Hopefully he can contribute a bit more in this department Thursday when the team squares off against divisional rival, the New York Knicks.