Kevin Durant, Rockets pummel exhausted Celtics to snap three-game winning streak: 6 takeaways

Boston Celtics

Boston ran out of steam playing their third game in four days on Saturday night.

The Celtics saw their three-game winning streak snapped in emphatic fashion on Saturday, as the Rockets claimed a crushing 128-101 victory. 

Here are the takeaways.

The Rockets took advantage of everything.

Saturday’s game was always going to be a massive challenge for the Celtics for myriad reasons. 

First, the schedule was incredibly unfriendly. Saturday’s game was the second night of a road-home back-to-back, and the Celtics put everything they had into fending off the 76ers for a hard-fought road victory on Friday. It was also their third game in four nights and the fifth game in seven nights. Those five games included contests against the Pistons and Cavaliers as well as the aforementioned Rockets and Sixers, and the travel involved added up to just under 4,000 miles. 

That’s not to say, however, that the Rockets only won because of the Celtics’ schedule. The Rockets also looked every bit like the contenders they were projected to be prior to the season. Kevin Durant was smoldering – he scored 26 points on 8-for-11 shooting and still looked unstoppable at 37. Amen Thompson is a special talent. Alperen Sengun finished one assist shy of a triple-double. The Celtics challenged Jabari Smith Jr. at the rim over and over, and he swatted them away four times. The Rockets made a staggering 65.5 percent of their 3-pointers, shooting 19-for-29 from deep, and they forced their way to the free-throw line, earning a 35-7 disparity (more on that in a minute). 

The Rockets thoroughly won Saturday’s game, and they have the personnel to thoroughly win a game against the Celtics on a night when both teams were fully rested. 

But the fact remains that the Celtics were far from their best, and the Rockets pummeled them a little extra as a result. 

“Maybe we made fatigued decisions on the court and stuff like that,” Payton Pritchard said. “We came ready to play, but we got popped tonight. Move on and get ready for the next one.”

Joe Mazzulla felt similarly.

“Obviously it wasn’t our night,” he said. “Rockets played well, good team, well-coached, They were prepared, and this wasn’t our night tonight. 

“So to me, that happens over the course of the season, and so it’ll be more important about how we respond on Monday at shootaround and in the game on Monday night.”

Baylor Scheierman has put together a couple of nice games.

Scheierman had a concerning preseason – the second-year forward is already 25, so questions were already brewing about his realistic upside, and he looked like he was trying to do too much to prove himself as a tough shot maker. 

In the last few games, however, Scheierman has gotten an opportunity to prove he can play within a system, and he has availed his future opportunities nicely. 

Interestingly, Scheierman has shown real flashes on the defensive end. Powerfully built with good size, he defended Tyrese Maxey well on multiple possessions Friday night, and he was solid defensively against the Rockets as well – defending well 1-on-1 and drawing two offensive fouls. 

Offensively, Scheierman isn’t trying to run the show as much, and that benefits him. He led the Celtics in scoring with 17 on 6-for-7 shooting and was 4-for-5 from 3-point range, knocking down multiple spot-up opportunities. He also cooked Steven Adams with a nasty hesitation move for a layup and finished an impressive tip-in late. 

“Just play hard, try to impact the game in a positive way,” Scheierman told reporters afterward. “Just try to make winning plays, whether that’s making shots or diving on the ground or getting illegal screens. That’s kind of my mindset coming into every game.”

Mazzulla said Scheierman has been doing what’s asked of him. 

“We’ve just got to string together possessions of what we need and accomplish those and execute on those,” he said. “That just builds trust, it builds discipline, it builds a habit. So he’s bought into that, of ‘These are the things we need you to do.’ The points are a bonus, but the other stuff is way more important, and he’s continued to work at doing it.”

Chris Boucher played but didn’t add much.

Boucher didn’t play against the Cavaliers or the 76ers, and while he received 13 minutes against the Rockets, he didn’t add much – scoring four points and recording a steal with no rebounds. He also picked up a bizarre flopping technical call after taking a hit from Sengun which left the Celtics livid. 

The Celtics have managed to get contributions from up and down their lineup, and while the rotation might never be fully cemented at any point this season, we are starting to get a better idea of who Mazzulla trusts and who he doesn’t. So far, Boucher seems to be closer to the latter group.

“What matters is: Do they string together possessions, regardless of if it’s at the beginning of the game, the end of the game, it really doesn’t matter,” Mazzulla said.

The Celtics’ free-throw disparity is a little wild.

The Celtics committed a lot of fouls trying to slow down a Rockets team that was killing them offensively, and replays repeatedly showed them committing fouls that drew frustrated reactions from fans but were objectively correct. 

Still, the free-throw disparity was a little eyebrow-raising – 35-7 – especially in conjunction with Friday’s 29-12 disparity against the Sixers. Over the last two games, the Celtics have seen a 64-19 disparity. 

Mazzulla told reporters afterward that free-throw rate is always correlated to turnover percentage.

“All we can coach is the free-throw rate to the turnover percentage, because it’s such a high-value opportunity of getting those, and you force 20 in a game, that’s really good,” Mazzulla said. “But you have to coach the ones that you have to do better at. To me, it comes back to the ones when you foul in tendencies, you foul on jump shooters, you foul because of an individual defensive breakdown.”

The Derrick White/Payton Pritchard slump continued.

White and Pritchard were far from alone – nobody in the rotation looked particularly good on Saturday, with the exception of Scheierman – but they were 1-for-9 combined. White is now shooting 25 percent from deep this season, while Pritchard is shooting a putrid 18 percent. Neither number, of course, is likely to hold, but the Celtics are stuck in a bit of a holding pattern as they wait for the dam to break. 

This game is why the Sixers win mattered.

The Celtics’ first seven games were always going to be a nasty gauntlet, and emerging from them near .500 would be a win. Beating the Sixers meant that the Celtics would wrap up this stretch at worst 3-4.

Now the Celtics get a couple of lighter opponents when they face the Jazz on Monday and Wizards on Wednesday, which will be an interesting test of this roster’s attention span. If they can keep their effort level high and win both home games, they will be above .500 again, which would feel like a nice accomplishment after losing their first three.