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Tim Bontemps, ESPN
BOSTON — For the first 45 minutes of Wednesday night’s game at TD Garden between the Minnesota Timberwolves and Boston Celtics — the teams with the two best records in the NBA entering the day — it looked for all the world like the Celtics’ unbeaten start to the season at home would come to an end.
After winning 17 straight in Boston to begin the season, the Celtics — playing a Minnesota team missing Mike Conley and Rudy Gobert that played Tuesday night in Orlando, Florida, and didn’t arrive in town until 1 p.m. Wednesday because of weather — had sleepwalked their way into a seven-point deficit inside the final three minutes of the contest.
But then Jayson Tatum took over. He scored 18 of Boston’s final 25 points — including outscoring Minnesota by himself (12-9) in overtime — to finish with 45, as the Celtics set a franchise record with an 18th consecutive home win to start the season, a 127-120 triumph over the Timberwolves.
“We was kind of sluggish to start the game, most of the game,” Tatum said. “Really, that last six minutes in the fourth and overtime, we really kind of played like ourselves.
“That’s kind of the scary thing … for, like, 12 minutes of the game, that’s the only time we really played like ourselves on both ends, and we still managed to win the game.
“That just shows that we can be a really special team.”
Tatum was right. It was only the final 12 minutes, if that, when Boston (29-8) looked like the team that entered this game with the NBA’s best record, the league’s second-ranked offense and defense and its best net rating.
Instead, the Celtics largely coasted through the opening stages, allowing a tired Timberwolves team missing two starters — including the leading candidate for defensive player of the year in Gobert — to hang around. Then, as the second half wore on, Minnesota (26-11) began making shots, with Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Kyle Anderson combining to score 18 fourth-quarter points, while Timberwolves stars Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns had only three.
That allowed Minnesota to stake itself to a 109-102 lead after Alexander-Walker hit a 3-pointer with 2:42 remaining, one that briefly looked like it would end Boston’s streak.
But then Tatum hit a layup and a stepback 3, and with 36 seconds to go, drew a shooting foul on Towns on the baseline to go to the charity stripe for two free throws and a chance to tie. After Tatum missed the second free throw, Derrick White swooped in to grab the rebound, and Tatum’s hot stretch of play caused Anderson to leave Jrue Holiday in the corner to come double, setting up Holiday for a wide-open triple with 25.2 seconds left that put Boston back in front.
“Yeah, [Tatum is] tough, man,” Anderson said. “He got hot. I kind of messed up and went rogue, leaving my guy, and they hit a big trey, but I just felt like he was scoring every possession, so I wanted to see if someone else could do it.
“They did it. That’s what good team’s do. That’s on me. I got to be more disciplined.”
Discipline, or lack thereof, defined how the rest of this game shook out. Edwards, one of the league’s brightest young stars, kept trying to force plays late in regulation and in overtime, looking to replicate his performance in the last meeting between these teams on Nov. 6 in Minneapolis when Edwards outscored Boston by himself in overtime to win the game for the Timberwolves.
This time, it was Tatum who turned the tables on Edwards and the Wolves, completely taking apart Minnesota’s defense in the extra session.
“I think Anthony had four turnovers in that closing stretch,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “Just too much iso, too much iso against a really good defense.”
Much of that defense on Edwards, who finished with 29 points but didn’t talk to the media postgame, was being played late in the game by Brown, who took on the challenge of shutting down his fellow Georgia native and did so brilliantly. Edwards usually is able to use his size and strength to bully defenders. Brown, though, is the rare defender Edwards can’t do that to, and Brown took it upon himself to make sure his “little brother” didn’t replicate his November performance.
“Tonight was just a night where we’re playing against a young superstar in Anthony Edwards, where he’s going to be aggressive,” Brown said. “He’s young. He seeks matchups like this. He wants to play against big names and big teams because it’s an opportunity for him to showcase his greatness. My whole thing was, not tonight. We can’t let him do what he’s been doing to everybody else, to us, especially after the first matchup.”
And, ultimately, Brown was good to his word. Still, his contributions didn’t end there, as he scored 35 to combine with Tatum for 80 points — the most the two of them have ever scored together in a game.
In another bit of Celtics history, Tatum and Brown have now combined to both score at least 35 points in a game four times in their careers. Across the rest of the franchise’s history, teammates have done that only five times total.
As a result, a Celtics team that has gone a combined 11-12 at home over the past two postseasons is reestablishing home-court dominance, with 18 consecutive wins representing the fourth-longest streak in the NBA in the past 25 years. It’s something Tatum said was a specific goal of his entering this season.
“It means a lot,” Tatum said of the home winning streak. “I’ve been saying this the last year or two, especially in the playoffs, we haven’t played that great at home. And earlier in my career, we never really lost at home. So just trying to get back to that, rewarding the fans that come and support us every night. It’s good to get back on track and play really well at home.”
Source: www.espn.com