BOSTON — Kristaps Porziņģis sat confused by a Celtics performance in Toronto lacking spirit and personality. Jrue Holiday shook the defeat and recent stretch off two days later, glad Boston could play again in short order and unsure why they’ve had issues with the starting lineup and effort. He summed it up to January. It happens.
Joe Mazzulla, who admitted Boston didn’t play well at either end in the loss, returned to the podium two days loving the position they entered the night in. He wouldn’t tell each player how to react, but began Friday’s back-to-back sure that the team will turn it around following a 7-7 stretch. He even showed some urgency by playing Porziņģis and Al Horford in the first of the two nights.
“You don’t rush it. To me, this is the fun part,” he said. “(It’s) why you enter the arena and why you do what you do, and anyone who’s not in the arena, you don’t have skin in the game, it really doesn’t matter … this is why you go after something that’s extremely hard to do, is for the challenge of it. To have an expectation of it being anything other than challenging is the wrong way to attack.”
Mazzulla also alluded to his voice behind the scenes, saying it’s on everyone to respond and they did with a team effort win over the hurting Magic, 121-94. Eight Celtics hit threes and five converted multiple. And as bad as Orlando’s injury report looked coming in, the Magic handed an ugly defeat to Boston in Florida last month with key starters missing.
The Celtics’ effort looked more serious from the open possession, defending into Magic player’s bodies. Holiday got the offense moving, finding Porzingis inside for a pair of baskets while Jaylen Brown made an extra pass from the corner with time to shoot to get Derrick White going after the latter missed his first layup try. Several plays later, White stopped-and-started for a finish in the post — looking closer to himself in the win.
The Magic didn’t relent early, punching out offensive rebounds, finding the open space against Boston’s defense and running to make up for Franz Wagner, Moe Wagner, Goga Bitadze, Jalen Suggs and Gary Harris’ absences. Paolo Banchero played on a minutes restriction. The Celtics started 8-for-10 and hit their first three from deep, Porzingis made all four of his shots in the opening quarter, plus a pair of free throws as the starters gave Boston a rare 19-13 cushion and finished +15. The bench held the line until a poorly managed possession went the other way for an uncontested Tristan da Silva give-and-go dunk.
Mazzulla looked frustrated, but only briefly addressed the team in the huddle before the Celtics produced threes for Sam Hauser and Horford. Boston hit its first five tries from three and led 35-28 into the second.
Tatum hit a pair of driving layups and stepped past Trevelyn Queen into a reverse to extend Boston’s advantage to double-digits. He beat Cole Anthony back door for an and-one dunk to reach 17 points with only three free throw attempts and two of his first 10 attempts coming from three. Defensively, the Celtics lived with Magic mid-rangers, but Banchero’s steady threat from there led to more defensive lapses, like Tatum sliding over to double Banchero off Anthony and Brown rotating over too late, giving up a three to Banchero. Orlando shot 16-for-26 from two in the first half, keeping them within 66-54 at half even with the Celtics scorching at over 60% from the field and from three.
The game, at the very least, trended toward a far better feeling than Wednesday, when Porziņģis called out Boston’s effort.
“It was an uncharacteristically bad game for us,” he said on Friday, looking back at his comments. “No energy. At one point I was like ‘man, we’re really gonna lose?’ It was one of those performances. We’ve rarely had those, but I feel like that one was unacceptable… we can miss shots, (etc.), but we had to have more personality. That’s what I felt, but today we looked like a completely different animal.”
Porzingis posted nine and Tatum scored the rest of Boston’s first 14 points in the third quarter, going up by 19 points on a 14-7 run, improving to 14-of-21 over the past two games and escaping Friday with only 23 minutes. He teased a potential back-to-back appearance on Friday, saying he believes he’ll play, but he ran for a breakout dunk in transition, missing it as Wendell Carter Jr. fouled him, a play that left Porzingis grabbing the back of his left leg, but able to continue. Later, he wore an ice pack on his right ankle while doing a radio interview.
Porzingis picked up a fourth foul four plays later, catching Banchero in the eye and leaving Banchero on the ground for an entire timeout before he split a pair of free throws and exited the game.
Orlando went scoreless on five of their next eight possessions as Brown pushed the Celtics’ lead to 22 with 13 straight points in a far more energized effort than he showed on Wednesday in Toronto. Banchero returned, but the Magic’s offense never got back on its feet, finishing 41.5% from the field and 15.6% from three.
The Celtics didn’t totally right the ship on Friday. With a win, they at least returned to resembling themselves — shooting 45.9% from three.
“Our ball pressure was good tonight,” Mazzulla said. “I thought our shift activity was good … we weren’t doing a great job defending without fouling, but we were active and we were aggressive … answering the call physically on both ends of the floor helped us get off to a good start and then I think we were able to make shots and build off that.”
