Jaylen Brown could see the fourth quarter well enough from the Boston bench to know he wasn’t worried about the Celtics‘ recent stumbles.
”If we would have played our normal rotation
Cheap Daryl Worley Jersey , we would have won that game,” he said Sunday after coach Brad Stevens rested his starters and watched the subs blow a
13-point, fourth-quarter lead to the Atlanta Hawks. ”No doubt about it.”
Taurean Prince made seven of eight 3-pointers to score 33 points, getting help from Isaiah Taylor and Dewayne Dedmon down the stretch to help the
last-place Hawks beat the playoff-bound Celtics 112-106.
With the No. 2 spot in the Eastern Conference already locked up, Stevens left Brown, Al Horford, Jayson Tatum and Terry Rozier on the bench for the entire
fourth quarter and Boston lost for the third time in four games.
”I think Brad made a good call,” Brown said. ”(The backups) got an opportunity and it was well-deserved.”
Rozier had 10 points, nine assists and eight rebounds for Boston, which had beaten Atlanta in the other three meetings this season. Tatum scored 19, Horford
had 16 and Greg Monroe scored 17 for the Celtics, who are without Kyrie Irving
and Gordon Hayward for the rest of the season and Marcus Smart for the start of
the playoffs.
”Let young guys play in the fourth
Cordy Glenn Color Rush Jersey ,” Stevens said. ”Bench play is going to be huge for us going into the playoffs without a full roster.”
Taylor and Dedmon scored nine straight points for the Hawks after they trailed 103-101 with 2 minutes remaining.
Prince added eight rebounds and five assists, and Damian Lee scored 14 with eight boards. Taylor had 13 points and Dedmon scored 10 for Atlanta, which has
beaten playoff teams in consecutive games but still has the worst record in the
Eastern Conference.
”(It’s) especially gratifying, knowing you have a couple impact players out and still be able to do what we do,” Prince said, alluding to the injuries to
Dennis Schroder and Kent Bazemore, two of the team’s top three scorers. ”It’s
good to see what we’re able to do, even without a full team.”
CRUNCH TIME
The Celtics took a 20-8 lead in the first quarter and nursed it through most of the game before a four-point play on a clear-path foul by Tatum, followed by
a Prince 3-pointer, helped turn a 73-63 deficit into a one-point game.
The Celtics opened the fourth with a 9-2 run to take a 91-78 lead. But Atlanta tied it 99-all on a four-point play by Mike Muscala with 5:32 to play.
After taking a 101-99 lead, the Celtics made five straight trips down the floor
without scoring before Monroe’s tip-in made it 103-101 with just over two
minutes left.
That’s when Taylor and Dedmon took over.
Taylor tied it 103-all with a layup and, after Monroe made one of two free throws
Robert Golden Color Rush Jersey , Dedmon made a 3-pointer to give Atlanta its first lead since the score was 3-2. Jonathan Gibson made a 20-footer for
Boston, then Dedmon’s dunk gave the Hawks the lead for good. Taylor followed
with a layup to make it a four-point game with 26 seconds left.
”Of course, they didn’t play their starters in the fourth quarter,” Atlanta coach Mike Budenholzer said. ”I think they got a lot out of today; those
(Celtics) played well for three quarters. I’m proud of the way our guys played
for all four quarters. It’s a good sign the way they’re developing.”
KYRIE SURGERY
Stevens said Irving’s surgery was a success and he should be ready to return next season. The point guard had two screws removed Saturday from his left knee,
which had developed an infection. The screws were inserted after he broke his
kneecap during the 2015 Finals.
Irving has not played since March 11. Rozier started at point guard on Sunday, the 11th time in 12 games he had been in the starting lineup after
coming off the bench for all but three of the previous 67 games.
TIP-INS
Prince scored 10 in the first quarter and had eight points and four rebounds in the fourth. … Boston’s Semi Ojeleye had a career-high 13 points. … The Hawks’
13 turnovers led to 15 Boston points, but the Celtics’ 12 turnovers led to 24
Atlanta points.
UP NEXT
Hawks: Finish the season at home against Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Celtics: At Washington on Tuesday.
—
Just before the most improbable of Stanley Cup Final in the most improbable hockey city around, Gary Bettman and Bill Daly put on a little show of their
own.
As lounge acts go, it probably wouldn’t play on the Las Vegas Strip. Then again, no one ever thought the Vegas Golden Knights would be playing on the Las
Vegas Strip – and certainly not as late as Memorial Day.
But play they did, in a wild 6-4 win over the Washington Capitals that officially ended with Elvis singing ”Viva Las Vegas” and the Golden Knights
taking a 1-0 lead in the series.
The greatest expansion team ever against a classic underachiever was already a story that has played well even among those who wouldn’t think of watching
anything but playoff basketball this time of the year.
But a thrilling Game 1 couldn’t have been scripted any better even if Bettman and Daly had spent their pre-game writing it instead of sitting in front of the
media, sharing laughs and a few inside jokes. They completed each other’s
sentences
Jose Cruz Jr. Jersey , and seemed to be having so much fun that they didn’t want to leave.
And why not? They could have taken a victory lap outside the T-Mobile Arena and no one would have seemed to mind.
They are the architects of NHL expansion, the gatekeepers who decide which cities are in the league and which cities must watch from the sidelines. They
came up with the plan – hatched privately a decade ago – for billionaire Bill
Foley to pay $500 million to put a team among the gamblers, degenerates and,
yes, upstanding citizens of the city where fun never stops.
They then made sure it would work, despite all the naysayers who said hockey would never catch on in the desert and certainly not in a city where there are a
lot of other things to do than watch hockey players race up and down the
ice.
But even the top league execs didn’t expect this.
”No one saw this coming,” Bettman said.
They didn’t in New York, and they didn’t in Las Vegas. A generous expansion draft helped set the Knights up to be competitive, but competitive doesn’t mean
scoring 109 points in the regular season and then going 13-3 in the
playoffs.
Competitive doesn’t mean taking the ice on Memorial Day with nearly 19,000 crazed Knights fans cheering them on inside the arena on the Strip and thousands
more partying as the game unfolded on big-screen TVs outside.
It was, as Bettman pointed out, 342 days since the expansion draft in the same arena. And what a 342 days it has been for not only the new franchise but a
league that took a chance on Sin City when no other league would.
Bettman and Daly rolled the dice that Las Vegas would raise the league’s profile and not just because it isn’t
http://www.broncosauthorizedshops.com/authentic-josey-jewell-jersey , well, Columbus or Ottawa.
”We thought being in Las Vegas would give hockey a greater presence and make the game stronger,” Bettman said.
The results, at least so far, show that bet paying off. Las Vegas has gone mad over the Golden Knights, and hockey is thriving in a town where most ice is
made for drinks, not rinks.
And the NHL is on a bit of a roll itself. The controversial decision not to halt play during the middle of the season for the Olympics paid off in increased
attention for professional hockey and television ratings for the playoffs, while
not nearly up to NBA levels, are up across the board.
And so far no one has said a word about the evils of sports betting and how a major sports franchise can’t exist in a city that allows it.
”This commissioner wasn’t scared by the things other sports leagues may have been scared about,” Daly said.
No one, of course, could have expected a hockey team to help heal a city in the wake of the Oct. 1 massacre that killed 58 people just down the street from
the hockey arena. But the Knights helped that cause
Cheap Kerryon Johnson Jersey , too, adopting the Vegas Strong name and honoring victims not only at the opener nine days after the shooting but at
games since.
The players – who call themselves the Golden Misfits – have also done their part, both on and off the ice.
”They seem to be playing with the emotion of a higher purpose,” Bettman said.
That’s one reason why the bookies had them favored to beat the Caps and win the iconic trophy before the first puck dropped in Game 1. So far they’ve not
only run through every obstacle in their way, but smashed through them.
Good times in Las Vegas, and good times for the NHL.
Little wonder that Bettman and Daly couldn’t stop smiling.
—-
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg(at)ap.org or .
