Consistency has been a struggle for the Boston Celtics to attain this season, both on personal levels and as a team. And though the sample size is small, what Gordon Hayward and the Celtics have done in the first two legs of their California trip is encouraging.
After dusting the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday, the Celtics came up with an impressive 111-109 victory over a talented Sacramento Kings side on Thursday in the second leg of a back-to-back.
It’s been a long road for the Hayward this season as he plays his first full campaign following his gruesome injury on opening night in 2017. Though it’s been clear many times this season Hayward isn’t quite where he used to be, at times he has shown flashes of that All-Star ability. The 30-points against the Warriors certainly was one of those instances, and though he didn’t put up eye-popping stats against the Kings, he made one of the game’s biggest contributions.
With the game tied at 109 with 7 seconds left, Hayward received an inbounds pass and drove the length of the floor. As he reached the paint, he planted with his left foot and hit a 9-foot fadeaway to give the Celtics the lead with 2 seconds left. It proved to be the winner when Harrison Barnes missed his shot at the buzzer.
It’ll be easy to look at Hayward’ 12 points and 6-for-10 shooting line (with three misses from 3-point territory on as many attempts) and be underwhelmed, but that the Celtics trusted him in the game’s biggest moment is not insignificant — even if they were playing without Kyrie Irving.
“On a night where he didn’t shoot it great, that was obviously a huge, big shot for us,” Celtics head coach Brad Stevens said after the game, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage.
Then, Stevens explained why he’s going to try and move past talking about Hayward’s recovery.
“He should have plenty of confidence — he’s a heck of a player and we all believe in him,” Stevens said. “So, I’ll probably stop talking about working his way back and just call him Gordon and try to help move forward here, because he’s obviously played great these two nights.”
Here are some other notes from Wednesday’s Celtics-Kings game:Â
— Al Horford shouldered a pretty big load in the win.
The C’s big man recorded his ninth double-double of the season, scoring 21 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. And whether it was in the paint or the perimeter, Horford was stout defensively.
“Al was awesome tonight,” Stevens said. “When we needed a basket there we posted him multiple times. He had a couple of great kick-outs, he had one that would have been a great kick-out but it got tipped on a great play by them. And then defensively he was really good. In the second quarter we went to switching a lot more, we played a lot bigger, and then we went back to it late. And we screwed it up some, but also I thought he was really good guarding perimeters and guarding in the traditional stuff.”
— The Kings play with a ton of energy, and given the Celtics were on the other side of the country in and in the second game of a road back-to-back, the Celtics were going to have to grind it out against Sacramento to earn the win.
This season has been marred by seemingly effortless and careless games, so Stevens was pleased with the way the Celtics gutted out Wednesday’s tilt.
“If that thing goes overtime, I don’t know if we have enough juice,” Stevens said. “These nights are tough and you just kind of have to gut it out. And I thought our guys — we haven’t always done that, and that’s been another hallmark of kind of our last few years, and so it was encouraging to see this win.”
— Irving missed Wednesday’s game with a left thigh contusion.
After originally submitting a clean injury report, the Celtics revised it with Irving listed about four and a half hours prior to tip.
Following the game, Stevens did not have an update on the point guard.
