Celtics dominate the Cavaliers in Game 1 winning 120-95
On Tuesday night at the garden, the Boston Celtics took on the Cleveland Cavaliers in game one of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. Boston had a 2-1 record against the Cavs in the regular season and would look to take on the Cleveland squad without one of their big additions, Kristaps Porziņģis. The Celtics will have their hands full as Cleveland is one of the bigger teams in the league, but they’re missing one of their significant big men in Jarrett Allen, who could be back later in this series.
First Quarter:
The first quarter would start with Boston looking just as they did against Miami, a mismatch nightmare. Boston’s high powered offense would come out firing led by Jaylen Brown and Derrick White picking up right where he left off from the Miami series draining 3’s. Cleveland seemed out of sorts early on trying to figure out Boston’s offense but they’d recover as the quarter went on and would go on a run of their own to make it a 23-23 game with 4:30 to go in the first. Boston would go on a 9-2 run late in the quarter to give themselves a 5 pint lead 30-25 with 3:13 to go in a surprisingly high scoring first quarter for two good defensive teams. Boston would look to their bench for help with Porzingis out and Luke Kornet showed up big defensively in the first quarter in limited minutes.
Boston would go on to create some separation the last few minutes with contributions from Kornet and Payton Pritchard, ending the first quarter leading 39-33 but a concerning trend for the Celtics was Cleveland shooting 50% from 3 in the first quarter.
Second Quarter:
A small surprise for the Celtics to start the quarter was that Jayson Tatum who hadn’t sat yet started the quarter alongside one of the Celtics trade deadline acquisitions in Xavier Tillman. Boston would struggle from distance early in this one shooting 3/13 from beyond the arc through the first 14 minutes of the game.
Since the Cavaliers took a first quarter lead Boston would go on a 26-11 run to give the Celtics a 47-34 lead with 7:59 to go in the second. The Celtics were getting contributions from everywhere with 7 players scoring through the first 16 minutes of the game.
Boston’s offense led by Tatum and Brown in the second quarter would allow them to start to pull away from Cleveland after a Jayson Tatum bucket gave them a 59-46 lead with 1:50 to go in the half. The Celtics would end the half leading 59-49 and while disjointed at times they looked to be heavily in control of this one.
Third Quarter:
The third would start with Boston coming roaring out of the gates led by their best player in the playoffs so far Derrick White. White would hit a pair of shots that would give Boston it’s largest lead of the night 71-57 with 8:48 to go in the quarter.
Boston would hit the glass against the bigger Cleveland this quarter trying to keep their lead but the Cavs wouldn’t go away slowly chipping away at Boston’s lead led by their star Donovan Mitchell. Mitchell would get up to 28 points with 3 minutes to go in the third cutting Boston’s lead to 85-72. However the man of the playoffs so far for Boston Derrick White would hit his 7th 3 of the night to stop Cleveland’s run.
The Celtics bench would once again come alive to end the quarter as Luke Kornet was cleaning up on the glass, while Payton Pritchard would hit a deep deep 3 pointer at the end of quarter buzzer to give Boston a 92-77 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Fourth Quarter:
The fourth would start with Boston in complete control of the game leading by 15 and looking to walk to a game 1 win. It certainly looked like they would walk to that win after a Jaylen Brown 3 would give them a 20 point lead with 11 minutes to go in the game. Holding leads seems to be a problem in the minds of Celtics fans but in reality they blew the fewest leads in the NBA this season so a twenty point lead with 11 minutes to go should be more than enough for this group.
Boston proved what fans saw all year that teams just can’t hang with Boston when they’re hitting 3’s. The Celtics struggled from deep in the first half but would go 10/18 from 3 in the second half to give themselves a 105-81 lead with 8:30 to go and this game was all but over. Boston was led by the stellar play of Jaylen Brown and Derrick White all night scoring in bunches with both having 25+ points halfway through the 4th quarter.
Boston would pull some of it’s starters with a little over 3 minutes to go as this game was long in hand with Boston cruising to a very convincing game 1 win over the Cavaliers. For Celtics fans this was exactly the outcome you had hoped for going into the game. The team continued to look dominate, stayed healthy and got some major contributions from the bench in Kristaps Porzingis absence.
The Celtics would go onto win 120-95 dominating almost every facet of the game and now they have a 1-0 series lead against a Cavaliers team that doesn’t seem to have the offensive firepower to hang with Boston in a 7 game series.
