The Boston Celtics wanted a momentum shift they usually knew it themselves.
Boston closed the door on 2024 going 5-5 in its final 10 video games of the yr, awaited by a difficult four-game street journey to start 2025. The Minnesota Timberwolves, Houston Rockets, Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder and Denver Nuggets make up these matchups, and the Celtics didn’t need to lengthen its December hunch.
So, that meant crew assembly time for the reigning champs.
“We had assembly earlier than this journey simply as a trying within the mirror kind of assembly, and see the place we will enhance and what we will do higher,” Kristaps Porzingis advised reporters after Friday night time’s win over the Rockets, as seen on NBC Sports activities Boston’s postgame protection. “As a result of groups are clearly coming for us and a few of them are enjoying their finest basketball towards us. So, some small changes that we need to make and attempt to hold enhancing as a crew and hold enjoying the identical approach. … To this point, from the small pattern dimension now we have we’re trying fairly good.”
With out Jaylen Brown, marking Boston’s sixteenth consecutive sport with out the crew’s high eight rotation gamers all wholesome, the Celtics stepped up.
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Porzingis returned after a four-game absence recovering from his Christmas Day ankle sprain, and Houston head coach Ime Udoka was dealt a impolite awakening. The Celtics, at first, struggled towards the league’s chief in offensive rebounds (14.2), however discovered their stride by pulling down 19-of-39 whole 3-pointers en path to a 109-86 victory.
Boston’s Mazzulla-ball methodology, whereas efficient, wasn’t the one think about Udoka’s Rockets failing to take off in Houston.
The Celtics held the Rockets to a mixed 30 factors within the second half, opening the door for Mazzulla to unload the bench within the sport’s remaining 4:53 and watch the crew trot towards its third consecutive victory. That leaves now two bins for the C’s to examine — the Thunder and Nuggets — earlier than returning house after their greatest check of the season.
“We’re making some changes,” Porzingis confirmed, per NBC Sports activities Boston. “I don’t wanna let you know all of the issues we’re doing however we’re performing some issues in another way and we simply needed to seek out one other approach the way to enhance. And as I stated, from the small pattern dimension, we’re trying good to this point.”
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The Celtics are standing sturdy because the No. 2 seed within the Japanese Convention, trailing the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers by 4 1/2 video games and forward of the third-place New York Knicks by two video games. Contemplating Porzingis missed 23 of the crew’s first 34 video games coupled with a stray of absences from key gamers like Jrue Vacation, Jaylen Brown and Sam Hauser, Boston has been weathering all potential storms.
Subsequent up, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the very best of the West on Sunday afternoon.
