Celtics unloaded mental baggage in all-time blowout of the Warriors

BOSTON — The Celtics traveled to San Francisco roughly three months after Joe Mazzulla took over as head coach for their first meeting with the Warriors since the 2022 NBA Finals. Inside their locker room, players joked as the room grew loud. Only Jaylen Brown walked through as teammates debated their alma maters.

After Boston’s 21-5 start, nobody wanted to admit this game meant something more. especially after Golden State drubbed the Celtics 123-107, in a similar fashion to how the Finals played out that summer. Jayson Tatum faded away from the ball, scoring 18 points in 40 minutes with two assists, Jaylen Brown scored 31 points to keep it close and Draymond Green helped aggressively to take the rim away. Mazzulla shrugged, liking the shots Boston got and saying he wasn’t disappointed with the result.

A less satisfied Celtics team took the floor on Sunday afternoon. Golden State still had something over Boston. Back in December, Green’s presence broke their drive-and-kick game, making Tatum look at his worst while forcing the ball out of his hands in an overtime loss. Without Kristaps Porzingis available again, the game appeared losable.

Instead, Boston drove up the lead to as many as 56 points in a game that knocked the Warriors back on their heels, then onto the bench for the entire second half. Brown scored 29 points and jarred with Green while spiting dares for Brown to shoot and teammates wanted to keep feeding Brown.

“When you have a creative idea and it doesn’t work and you’re taking the ball out of the basket and they’re hitting 10 threes in the first quarter ... That’s what we used to do to teams,” Steph Curry said. “It’s kind of demoralizing.”

While the Warriors tried to shake off the 140-88 loss — Green blaming it on a trick defense formalized 15 minutes before the game — the loss left Golden State reeling. Curry smiled while discussing the defense’s plan to expose a vulnerability in Boston’s offense. Green and Steve Kerr both tried to flush it in ways the Warriors have successfully in the past, reaching the playoffs and winning series each of the last two years despite their own issues like an aging core have presented. Those vulnerabilities, nonetheless, existed in 2022 and earlier this season when the Celtics lost. A seriousness and attention to detail had to emerge.

That’s become the story of Boston’s 11-game win streak, the franchise’s longest since the 2017-18 season early in Kyrie Irving’s tenure. They don’t let teams off the hook. After a slow start, Tatum began mashing Curry and Warriors guards at the rim even as the Celtics unloaded 49 three-point attempts. Green said shots just went in, the easiest out and inverse of Mazzulla’s 2022 argument. In reality, Boston’s growing attention to detail to where the ball needed to go overwhelmed Golden State’s defense the way it had every other team it’s played since February began.

“They’ve stayed motivated, hungry. You always take those moments and understand you have to get better and they’ve done that,” Curry said. “The way they’ve been playing, they seem very sure of themselves and their identity and who they are. You give them credit. They came out and whooped us from the jump ... they’ve elevated their game and you’ve gotta give them credit ... connected both sides of the ball, they obviously play a physical style and then they know how to space and what shots they’re trying to create. It seems like they have confidence no matter who has the ball in their hands. It’s an identity and a confidence in how you play every night. You can feel it with certain teams ... you don’t win 11 in a row on accident.”

Brown unloaded on the Warriors’ baffling approach to hedge, but that extreme reflected an increasingly dire problem for the Celtics’ competition around the league. Against lineups filled with playmaking, size and shooting, there’s nowhere to hide small defenders. Dallas had just allowed 87% shooting to Boston’s players when Luka Dončić guarded them. The Celtics can maintain that success with different lineups, with the Al-Horford-starting-in-place-of-Porzingis lineup going from holding the line (-0.1 net rating) to a +4.3 that would rank in the top-10.

The Celtics’ overall net rating reached +11.6 with the win, and they’ve beaten teams by an average of over 22 points per game during this streak, including two of their record three 50+ point wins this season. Boston did that last year, but their consistency quarter-to-quarter, half-to-half and game-to-game dazzles in comparison to last year’s inconsistencies and let downs. Now, Mazzulla appears more interested in running up the leads the Celtics build.

“The most important things when you play those guys is the margins,” Mazzulla said. “The emotion of the threes and the speed at which they play is one thing, but it comes down to margins and transitions. Tonight, the guys did a great job at the end of the first half, we only had one turnover and they only had two offensive rebounds. In game one, we were up 17 and we didn’t close the third quarter well, didn’t start the fourth quarter well and it became a close game. When you play against a team like that, close games are difficult ... it’s the team’s discipline and their mindset and their togetherness.”

Seeing becomes believing after a certain point, with Kerr and Curry becoming part of a long line of NBA personnel to call the Celtics the top team in the league. Their flexibility to player smaller and larger lineups while maintaining suffocating coverage on Curry and Chris Paul, while exceeding their offensive standard without Porzingis continues to erase concerns that injuries could knock them off their path. Seemingly tough matchups — Warriors, Heat, Knicks, etc. — from a year ago have become less difficult. A game-by-game approach, Tatum said recently, has allowed the Celtics to achieve that level of consistency.

Boston can now check the Warriors thing off their list, too, something this team had to get past regardless of how increasingly unlikely it is that the Finals would feature a 2022 rematch. Golden State gave teams a blueprint for the way to guard the Celtics by taking away the rim; that now looks foolish.

Other teams, like Philadelphia last week, have switched aggressively to take away the three. Boston dismantled both defenses, and while the Warriors’ pedigree makes it worth considering their ability to shrug off the regular season, and while the Celtics’ past playoff misfortunes have made it fair to withhold judgement on their championship favorite status — this team seems to flat out get it.

Their ability to turn all the little things into something big, some of the best and most consistent two-way production we’ve ever seen from a team, makes it harder not to dream. Jrue Holiday mentioned avoiding offensive lulls as something the Celtics, in response to Horford’s post-Knicks call for even better production, could improve at.

How was this for that?

“We won the start of the third quarter, 17-10, and that’s really important to be in situations where you have a chance to have a letdown and you win it by seven. That’s why they stayed out there and that’s why we practiced that,” Mazzulla said. “Not taking bad shots, not turning the ball over, not quitting on plays and giving up rebounds, not not getting back in transition.”