March 22, 2025 | 12:50 AM
The Celtics cruised through much of Friday’s game and picked up their energy as necessary to claim a comfortable 121-99 victory.
Here are the takeaways.
We aren’t breaking much new ground here, admittedly, but on a night when Jaylen Brown sat out and Jayson Tatum was a little hot and cold, Porzingis was the perfect third star for the Celtics.
Much is (very correctly) made of Tatum’s seemingly limitless offensive arsenal, but less is made of Porzingis for some reason, even though Porzingis can reach similarly deep into his bag and emerge with a wide variety of options. He was 3-for-5 from three, stepping into triples with confidence. The Celtics were more than happy to toss the ball into him whenever he had a guard isolated in the post, and he’s well-practiced at baiting defenders into contact from 10-15 feet from the hoop and then finding a way to sneak the ball in anyway. At the start of the third quarter, he faked a hand-off to Derrick White, then put the ball on the floor and curled around his defender to the rim for a big one-handed slam. Porzingis finished with 27 points on 9-for-15 shooting to go with 10 rebounds and six assists, and he did it all in just under 25 minutes of action.
The Celtics won the title last year with Porzingis sidelined for the vast majority of the postseason, but they are much more dangerous and dynamic with him on the floor. If you want to see the Celtics make a deep run — and we would presume you do, since you are here reading this — knock on any wood you can find while thinking about a healthy Porzingis, because there aren’t a lot of teams in the NBA who have an answer for him.
Tatum looked like the best player on Earth for the first 12 minutes of the game, and his flurry of closing punches pushed the Celtics over the finish line comfortably before he checked out from the last few minutes of the game having played just under 34 minutes.
In the middle, however, Tatum was pretty quiet. He did just enough to help the Celtics win comfortably, but he never really appeared to be taxing himself much.
That, of course, is fine on a night when the Celtics beat a lottery-bound Jazz squad by 23. The Celtics didn’t need Tatum to score the 56 points he was on pace to tally after the first quarter — not when a far more casual 11-for-25-from-the-floor, 26-point performance with six rebounds and six assists was plenty to get the job done.
Tatum also sent the NBC Sports Boston broadcast into hysterics when he appeared to inadvertently bump the ball to himself with his heel in transition — a move that should make the flailing US men’s national soccer team sit up and take notice.
The Celtics have been the best offensive team in the NBA over the last month, but the Jazz appeared badly flustered by the Celtics’ defense. Utah turned the ball over 17 times, including five alone by rookie Kyle Filipowski. The Celtucs, meanwhile, recorded 13 steals including three each by Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and Tatum to go with three blocks by Luke Kornet.
The Celtics outscored the Jazz 26-6 in transition.
“Just good activity from everybody,” Joe Mazzulla said afterward. “I thought it starts with the individual defense. I thought we did a good job most of the game on our individual defense, and then the activity, and then the trust behind. So everybody was very active, and that’s the type of effort that we need, and it was great.”
With the Celtics essentially locked into the two-seed, Mazzulla and the players have been forced to find creative ways to stay present and deal with the challenge of winning in the NBA night to night.
“The process of winning, execution, rebounding, the details, the proper mindset of being competitive, toughness,” Mazzulla said when a reporter asked what the keys are to the end of the season. “So just the things that lead to winning, and we’ve got to keep doing it.”
Even against the Jazz, a win isn’t guaranteed — the Celtics looked dominant for much of the game, but a run spurred by Collin Sexton in the third quarter trimmed the lead as low as four before the Celtics ran it back up again.
Mazzulla said he appreciates his team’s competitive nature.
“At the end of the day, we’ve got to win, but we’ve got to do it the right way,” Mazzulla said. “We’ve got to do it through the process. So we did that tonight. Got to keep it up.”
One thing about having a team with as many individual stars as the Celtics is that while a player like Jrue Holiday might finish a game with just eight points on 3-for-6 shooting, there are often a few Easter eggs hidden in a blowout like Friday’s that remind you just how good he is.
This sequence is a good example.
Our condolences to the assistant coach on the Jazz bench who was so infuriated he started smacking his hand with a rolled up piece of paper. Playing the Celtics looks frustrating.
After his big game at TD Garden on Tuesday, Baylor Scheierman has now earned — and won — the Celtics his first green light special.
Early in the fourth quarter, Jazz forward Micah Potter rumbled toward the rim, looking to throw down a big one-handed dunk. Scheierman, however, got in his way and jumped straight up in the air, throwing both of his hands up. Potter missed the dunk, but he got the whistle, and the Celtics’ bench leapt up in protest. Mazzulla took a quick look backwards, and sure enough, his assistants told him to review it. As Scheierman walked to the bench with his arms up – demonstrating how he defended the dunk attempt – he received several high fives, and the Celtics won the challenge.
Joe Mazzulla burned his second challenge three minutes later on an out-of-bounds call that even looked obvious on TV, leaving the Celtics without a challenge for the final 5:12 of the game.
Scheierman couldn’t replicate Tuesday’s heroics, finishing 0-for-4 from 3-point range, but to Joe Mazzulla’s point postgame: Scheierman’s job this season isn’t to be a 3-point bomber. His job is to show that he can hang at the NBA level doing other things, and challenging a massive dunk attempt straight up is a nice start.
On Friday, the Celtics announced that Jaylen Brown — who sat out Friday’s game — has a bone bruise and will also miss Sunday’s game before he is re-evaluated on Monday.
That creates a dilemma for Brown, who — presumably — would like to take a couple of games off before the playoffs, but who no longer has much of a cushion if he hopes to be eligible for end-of-season awards. To remain eligible, Brown would need to play in nine of the Celtics’ last 11 games before the postseason.
Given all the players who will not be eligible (and, of course, his contributions to the Celtics’ success as a whole), Brown would have a shot at an All-NBA team, which would look very good on a future Hall of Fame candidacy, especially alongside his Finals MVP.
Brown knows his body and presumably will make the right choices, but his All-NBA candidacy might be the only thing about the Celtics’ season that comes down to the final few games.
The Celtics will continue their road trip on Sunday when they travel to Portland to take on the Trail Blazers — presumably an opportunity for Pritchard to put together a big performance in his hometown as the Celtics play a split squad on the front end of a back-to-back.
On Monday, the Celtics will be in Sacramento for a game against the Kings which tips at 10 p.m.
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