The holidays are for a lot of things. It’s a break from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, a time to relax, unwind, and chase the girl of your dreams through the airport on Christmas Eve to the theme from Chariots of Fire, ignoring all relevant security measures in the name of true love.
But it’s also a time for unending NBA basketball, as part of the deal for professional basketball players is occasionally getting sent on a holiday west coast trip. The Celtics drew that straw this year, and event number one was to have their heart broken by Stephen Curry, causing me to lose my entire mind.
Not a great welcome to California, but the Celtics have proceeded to take out their anger on the cities of Sacramento and Los Angeles. I needed a chill, unproblematic win this weekend, and I got just what the doctor ordered.
On Saturday afternoon, the Celtics popped the Clippers in the Christmas box and punted them back to San Diego. This unadulterated destruction derailed the Clippers hype-train, who recently won nine straight and were starting to think the James Harden trade wasn’t a totally horrendous idea.
We might be back to thinking it was a totally horrendous idea, because the Kawhi Leonard-less Clippers were completely unable to hang with the Kristaps Porzingis-less Celtics. Whether Leonard or Porzingis is a better health bet is an open question, but it’s pretty clear who the better supporting cast is.
I don’t know how many more times I can emphasize how much of a throttling this was. At times, the Clippers looked like they just weren’t running fast enough to keep up with the Celtics’ relentless pace. It was run, run, run, run, run for a full hour, and while this was pretty clearly going to be a win from the get-go, two things turned it into a certified blowout.
1. Burying opponents in an avalanche of three-pointers
Thing One was an unyielding barrage of threes, hitting 25 of 53 shots from outside. That is a ridiculous amount of points to come from a shot that is easy to execute and can come from any angle, and the Clippers mere 11 triples was totally insufficient to deal with that type of volume.
This is a sometimes-concerning but sometimes-unbeatable strategy most Celtics fans are starting to call “Mazzulla Ball,” which is by no means a novel idea. “Chuck a ton of threes” isn’t really a revolutionary offense, but the Celtics are the first team I can remember that has an entire team built around executing it.
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