Celtics showed true colors in dangerous moment with disaster potential

Monday night at TD Garden, the Boston Celtics were back on the parquet after their longest road trip this season. They went 4-1 during that stretch, which mostly took them to the West Coast. However, when it comes time to turn the page, that first game after a cross-country flight and a lengthy stay away from the comforts of home presents a significant challenge.

It's common to see a team come out energetic in the first half, only for the taxing nature of the situation to catch up to them in the second.

By no means were the Celtics facing a juggernaut. The Chicago Bulls entered this game with a 17-18 record. They're ninth in the Eastern Conference standings. However, one that's still an NBA team they were facing, one that was a win away from having a .500 record. Secondly, this was more of a personal challenge for Boston.

How the hosts responded to it spoke volumes about their character, identity, and fortitude.

Celtics lean on defense in win over Bulls

Offensively, Boston struggled to find a rhythm in the first half. Heavy legs led to shooting a putrid 35.7 percent from the field. That includes going 6/21 (28.6 percent) from beyond the arc.

However, neither the misses piling up nor the exhaustion they were battling through took away from their performance on defense. If anything, they responded by locking in even more, understanding they had less of a margin for error.

The Celtics held the Bulls to 14 points in the first quarter. They entered halftime with 33. If you thought Boston wasn't shooting the ball well, Chicago converted on just 31.7 percent of its field goal attempts. The visitors went 5/28 (17.9 percent) from three-point range.

They also saw the hosts parlay eight turnovers into 15 points, aiding a struggling offense. The same was true for the Celtics' ability to generate 14 second-chance points off of 14 offensive rebounds.

"Our defense kept us in it. Our offensive rebounding kept us in it. As long as we can continue those margins, those are the things that allow you to play the way that you need to play when you're not at your best from a shooting standpoint," said Joe Mazzulla after Boston's 115-101 win.

"We understood coming into the game, like how tough the game was going to be, mentally and physically," Anfernee Simons conveyed. "Just coming off a long road trip, coming from the West Coast, being on the plane all day, and we knew that it was a possibility that we might struggle a little bit offensively, but I think defensively, through most of the first half, I think we played great. We were getting stops and making it a game, and I think that's what helped us. You know, for sure, just the defensive end until our offense came along."

Simons was at the heart of why the offense heated up in the second half. The eighth-year guard went from going scoreless on 0/3 shooting in the first two frames to erupting for 27 points in the final two periods. It's the most scored by a Celtic off the bench in one half in franchise history, per StatMuse.

While Simons led Boston in scoring, his backcourtmate, Payton Pritchard, finished second on the team in that category with 21 points. The latter knocked down 47.1 percent of his shots. He buried four of the seven threes he hoisted.

The distance the Celtics were able to put between them and the Bulls, building a 23-point cushion, helped fend off Chicago's fourth-quarter run, as fatigue set in.

"Coming off the long flight, long road trip, I don't think the last three years we've been very successful off those," voiced Pritchard after the victory. "It's definitely hard. Very jet-lagged and tired, so just to mentally get through it and figure out how to win."

It's an outcome that, coupled with the Detroit Pistons' victory over the New York Knicks, propels Boston into second place in the Eastern Conference standings. It's a nice "welcome home" present after a long trip.