BOSTON — On paper, it looked like a terrific matchup: a red-hot Portland Trail Blazers team against a Celtics club in the midst of a massive home winning streak.
Through the first 12 minutes of action at TD Garden, Wednesday’s game lived up to the hype. But there was one caveat to the Blazers’ recent success that became abundantly clear as the game unfolded.
Portland took the floor Wednesday for the fourth time in five nights, its final contest of a brutal cross-country road trip. So what did the Celtics do? They cranked up the pace to a frantic level and forced the road-weary Blazers to keep up. According to Isaiah Thomas, it was all part of the plan.
“No doubt,” said the Celtics point guard, who dropped 30 points in Boston’s 116-93 win. “They came out really well, but we kept telling ourselves, ‘It’s a long game. Stay at it, stay being aggressive and make it tough on those two guards (Damian Lillard and C.J. McCollum).’ And we did that, and they slowed down a bit because, I guess, the four games in five nights. That’s tough.”
Thomas helped the Celtics keep pace early, but it was Boston’s monster third quarter that put Portland away for good. Sensing the Blazers losing steam, the C’s pounced, outscoring Portland 30-12 in the quarter and racking up 13 fast-break points to expand a six-point halftime lead to 24 by the start of the fourth.
“Our mindset was to just stay on them the entire game and try to make everything hard on them,” shooting guard Avery Bradley said. “Try to wear them down, make them have to defend. That’s what we did, and we did a great job of that.”
Boston’s outburst of energy certainly caught the eye of head coach Brad Stevens.
“We flew around about as well as we have all year in the third quarter,” Stevens said.
Click for the Celtics-Blazers Wrap >>
Let’s hit a few other notes from Celtics-Blazers:
— If you feel like the Celtics haven’t lost at home in forever, well, you’re kind of right.
Wednesday’s win was Boston’s 12th consecutive home victory, a streak that dates all the way to Jan. 6. The C’s have lost just two home games in 2016.
It’s the team’s longest home win streak since 2007, and with a win on Friday over the New York Knicks, the Celtics could tie the single-season record for their longest home win streak at TD Garden (13), set by the Big Three-led 2009-10 team.
— Speaking of “home,” Wednesday was a homecoming for two local Blazers players: Haverhill, Mass., native Noah Vonleh and Arlington, Mass., native Pat Connaughton.
Connaughton, who was a three-sport star at St. John’s Prep High School in Danvers, Mass., had about 500 people at TD Garden come to watch him play, according to the Celtics’ media relations staff. If you don’t believe us, here’s photo evidence:
I mean there were a million people here just to see Pat Connaughton. Here they are waiting for him after the game pic.twitter.com/6o8c166542
— Adam Himmelsbach (@AdamHimmelsbach) March 3, 2016
— Celtics-Blazers featured a rare matchup of two Coaches of the Month, as both Celtics coach Brad Stevens and Blazers coach Terry Stotts earned February honors in their respective conferences. So was Wednesday the ultimate battle to crown the NBA’s true coaching champion?
“I told one of their assistants when I walked out, laughing about that,” Stevens said before the game. “If it’s between the coaches, the Celtics are in trouble, so hopefully the players can pick me up.”
— Stevens also provided an update on Kelly Olynyk and his injured right shoulder before the game.
“The last that I have heard is we’ll be revisiting that on Monday, with a chance that he’ll up his activity Monday, whatever that means,” Stevens said.
It’s been three weeks since Olynyk partially separated his right shoulder on Feb. 10. The initial timetable for his return was three to four weeks.
— We have a winner for tweet of the night, and it’s the 5-foot-9 Thomas in a landslide:
https://twitter.com/Isaiah_Thomas/status/705254567357911041
Thumbnail photo via Bob DeChiara/USA TODAY Sports Images
