For the second-straight game, the Boston Celtics added to their win total. Their absolute beatdown of the Atlanta Hawks served as a warning for the rest of the league that the Celtics are, in fact, back.
Here's what stood out:
This was a uniform matchup of all time
It’s been almost a decade since the NBA and Nike started rolling out “City Edition” jerseys for all 30 teams every season. More or less, the point of the City Edition uniforms is to sell merchandise. New designs each year means fans will buy new hats, sweatshirts, and other merch for each new drop.
The threads are also meant to be different than each team’s standard lineup of unis. Sometimes, that gives us what we got on Saturday -- a game where neither team is wearing their typical colors.
Boston wore white and gold while Atlanta dressed in black and peach.
Somewhere in the world, a casual NBA fan walked into a bar, saw this game on the television, and couldn’t figure out which teams were playing. For what it’s worth, neither of these jerseys is bad, either. It’s just strange that both teams were tough to identify.
This was 48 minutes of Celtics euphoria
After enduring what’s been one of the roughest six-game stretches of Celtics hoops in quite some time, fans got to kick their feet up, relax, and belly laugh at how unconscious the Cs were in Atlanta Saturday.
Pretty much from the opening tip, this game was all Boston. The Hawks hung around in the first quarter. They didn’t get knocked out by the Celtics’ initial punch, which was Jaylen Brown’s 18-point outburst in the opening 12 minutes.
It wasn’t until Anfernee Simons and Sam Hauser bludgeoned them to death with a barrage of threes in the second quarter that the Hawks hit the mat.
As a team, the Celtics poured in 52 points in the frame, shooting a red-hot 19-25 from the field and 11-15 from beyond the arc.
From that point on, they maintained complete control. Their lead never dipped below 30 points for the majority of the second half, before it hit 29 in garbage time.
The Celtics need more of the same from Simons and Hauser
As mentioned above, this was an awesome game for both Simons and Hauser. The two provided key secondary scoring for Boston while the score was still close, and again, that boost helped them blow the game open.
It’s unrealistic to expect Simons and Hauser to shoot 5-8 and 10-15 from three (before all of the nonsense started), respectively, but if they’re able to maintain some efficiency on lower volume, then it’d elevate the Celtics significantly. Remember, depth was expected to be an issue in Boston with the losses of Jrue Holiday, Kristaps Porzingis, Al Horford, and Luke Kornet this season.
With the high-quality shots the Cs create for both sharpshooters on a regular basis, they should be able to continue producing at a rate efficient enough to help this team win games.
The lights were too bright for Sam Hauser to etch his name in the Celtics record books
As mentioned in the last section, Hauser sank 10 of his first 15 attempts from long range, bringing himself within one make of tying Marcus Smart’s franchise record for threes in a single game.
From that point on, Hauser shot 0-6 from deep.
The lights were clearly too bright for No. 30.
In all seriousness, once the entire offense focused on trying to get more shots for Hauser, it clearly became too much for his legs. Spriting around and coming off of screens to try and get clean looks while Atlanta knows exactly what the plan is isn’t easy.