The Celtics survived one of their worst shooting performances of the season to beat the Wizards 108-96 in the NBA Cup.
Last Saturday, the Celtics barely scraped past one of the worst teams in the NBA, needing overtime to put away the two-win Toronto Raptors.
They had similar trouble Friday against another Eastern Conference cellar-dweller.
Boston endured one of its worst shooting performances of the season — including a garish 0-for-10 showing from 3-point range by Jayson Tatum — and trailed the Washington Wizards for much of the night before pulling away to win 108-96 at Capital One Arena.
“It’s good to win a game when you’re playing at your best offensively, and we had three 25-point quarters defensively,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla told reporters after the game. “You’ve got to win different ways, and winning down the stretch and doing that with your defense is good.”
The rock-fight victory kept the Celtics in contention in the 2024 NBA Cup, and a string of late free throws helped them pad their point differential — a key tiebreaker to determine the eight quarterfinalists. They improved to 2-1 in NBA Cup group play with a plus-14 differential and one game remaining: next Friday at Chicago.
Jaylen Brown powered the Celtics with 31 points, 11 rebounds and five assists, capped by a clutch 19-footer with less than a minute remaining that all but ended Washington’s upset bid. Tatum struggled mightily as a perimeter shooter but was a team-best plus-20 in the win, finishing with 16 points, nine rebounds, eight assists and two steals.
Luke Kornet, a healthy DNP in Tuesday’s win over Cleveland, was an impact player in his 24 minutes off the bench, steadying the Celtics during a sluggish and mistake-filled first half.
As a team, Boston shot 42.4% from the floor and 23.9% from three and tied their lowest scoring output of the season against a Wizards team that came in ranked dead last in the NBA in defensive rating and net rating.
Washington built an early lead thanks to some scattershot Celtics shooting, as Boston generated quality looks but made just one of its first seven 3-pointers. Tatum started 1-for-5 and 0-for-3 from three, and the Celtics went nearly five full minutes without a made field goal, during which Washington outscored them 12-2.
