BOSTON -- The Boston Celtics fell to the Golden State Warriors on Friday night, but impressed in the process.
Obviously no team wants to lose and the Celtics seemed destined for an L within the first few minutes of the tilt with the Warriors, but something changed in the second half of Friday's 111-107 loss, and at one point, it even looked like Boston would complete a comeback.
The Celtics carried a 14-point deficit into the locker room for halftime after a deflating foul on Warriors guard Stephen Curry's half court heave resulted in three free throws and a technical foul on head coach Ime Udoka tacked on another one to close the half. Boston certainly didn't look like themselves early, which isn't too surprising as they only had 11 active players and were missing key contributors like Al Horford and Dennis Schröder but still they looked off.
For as bad as they looked in the first half, they looked equally as good in the second half as they cut the Warriors' lead and even took a fourth quarter lead of their own thanks to a red-hot Jayson Tatum. The Boston defense was the biggest difference as they held the high-powered Golden State offense to just 14 points in the third quarter. Although the Celtics weren't able to complete the comeback, with the squad facing many challenges right now they at least showed glimpses of what they're capable of.
After the game head coach Ime Udoka addressed the vast difference between the two halves and what he liked from the squad even in a loss.
"Kind of a tale of two halves. First half 50/50, loose balls and offensive rebounds really hurt us. I think they had nine for 14 points in the first half then we really limited that to two and five second chance points in the second half. I love the effort and the first to get back in it," Udoka said. "It's tough when you dig yourself that big of a hole. There was a stretch in the fourth quarter where they got some loose balls and kind of hurt us with a 10-4 run there after we had taken the lead. Love the fight and effort overall -- shorthanded or not -- we've got capable guys out there and we felt like we defended at the proper level in the second half with a 43-point half and 14 point second quarter. That's big time defense but we need to bring that from the get-go."
Celtics forward Jayson Tatum furthered Udoka's sentiment after the game.
"Obviously the second half we played a lot better. We kind of dug ourselves a hole at first and I mean regardless of who we had available -- you don't want to try to take that into account because the whole league is dealing with that right now," Tatum said. "We had a chance, we gave ourselves a chance with the group we had available, especially that second half the way we played. It felt good."
Again, obviously no team wants a loss and moral victories don't help playoff seeding out at the end of the year, but in a game that could've easily been a 20 or 30-point loss after such a rough start, it does bring a little hope seeing the way the team came together in the second half.
