By the start of the fourth quarter Isaiah Thomas had eight points on 3-for-13 shooting. The sprained middle finger on his left (shooting) hand was sore enough to alter his floater. The Celtics guard didn't have a good feel for the rim last night until the last 12 minutes, when Harrison Barnes and Wesley Matthews started burying a chain of big jumpers that nearly put the Celtics in the ground as well.
The fact the Celtics pulled out their sixth win of the season owes a lot to Thomas' ability to suddenly spike from below freezing to the temperature of the sun, scoring 22 of his 30 points in the fourth quarter.
"Guess I just like that quarter, man," Thomas said after the Celtics beat Dallas, 90-83. "Sometimes guys get a little tired and the pressure gets a little tougher for them. I guess I like the pressure. I was really just trying to make plays and my teammates put me in position to get myself going, because the first three quarters I wasn't really playing too well. For whatever reason, I wasn't myself. So I saw the ball go in, hit a free throw in the fourth quarter, and then I just felt better about myself. Like I said, my teammates set screens, my coach put me in position, and I just took advantage of it."
Not only did his big 3-pointer with 1:31 left put the game out of reach, but he was 12-for-13 at the line in the quarter. Thomas began attacking, and the Mavericks big men never could get off their heels. And down the other end, Barnes finally blinked. He had scored 10 of Dallas' 14 points during one particularly torrid stretch - Matthews had the other four on a free throw and 3-pointer - and was shooting with impunity despite the tight coverage of Marcus Smart and Avery Bradley.
Both players left the court believing they had done everything possible to corral the former Golden State forward, who scored 12 of his 28 points in the fourth. Dirk Nowitzki, who is nursing a sore Achilles tendon, did not play. Point guards Deron Williams and J.J. Barea, the latter in the fourth quarter, also left the game with injuries.
"You just have to keep playing. He made a lot of tough shots and that's what we wanted," Smart said of guarding Barnes. "You've got to live with it. If he's going to make contested shots, especially inside the 3-point line and they're not at the hoop, we're going to live with that."
Barnes had just hit a 15-footer over Bradley, tying the game at 76 with 3:54 left, and Thomas had answered by losing the ball down the other end, when Barnes returned to the same general spot near the foul line.
He attempted to lose Smart with a ball fake, lowered the ball, and watched the Celts guard reach in for a clean steal. Smart hit Thomas with an outlet pass for a fast break layup and a 78-76 lead with 3:18 left. "He brought the ball right back to me and I made a play. I stripped it from him," Smart said. "He brought it below his waist instead of keeping it up and I took it from him."
The next time down Barnes missed a relatively open 3-point attempt, and Thomas responded with his only missed free throw of the quarter, followed by a make. Seth Curry missed, and the Celtics came alive on the offensive glass when Jonas Jerebko dove to tap the loose ball off a Bradley miss back out to Thomas at the top of the circle.
Bradley, with a second chance, drove the baseline for an 81-76 lead. Matthews hit his second 3-pointer of the quarter, cutting the Celts lead to 81-79, and this time they put the game out of reach with a 7-0 run.
Thomas started it all off with his biggest jumper of the night - a 3-pointer - and then fed Bradley for a dunk off the break. Thomas, fouled again, hit twice from the line with 41.4 seconds left.
The players, as it turned out, had called a players-only meeting the day after losing to Washington by 25 points on Nov. 9. Perhaps they were starting to see that frustration begin to bear fruit.
"Just that we need to hold each other accountable," Bradley said of the message in that meeting. "We weren't playing to our ability. Some guys, two or three guys were playing harder on the defensive end, but the other three guys weren't. We needed everyone playing hard consistently as a team and tonight I feel like was one of our best defensive games.
"We had our lapses sometimes, but for the most part we were talking and helping. That's good for our team."
No comments:
Post a Comment