The Celtics beat the Hornets 119-80 in Charlotte on Friday night, and Jayson Tatum had 34 points, eight rebounds and nine assists in 29 minutes before he sat the whole fourth quarter, per ESPN’s box score. Boston is 7-2 and 2-0 in NBA Cup group play.
My take: the 39-point margin is the part of this game that will still matter in three weeks. In the NBA Cup, point differential is a tiebreaker, and it is the first tiebreaker for the wild card. Boston is now plus-53 after two group games. That cushion is real insurance if the Celtics slip against Atlanta on Nov. 27, and nobody should wave it off because Charlotte was short-handed.
How the tiebreakers work
Thirty teams are split into six groups of five, and each team plays the other four in its group once. Eight teams reach the knockout round: the six group winners and one wild card from each conference, the second-place team with the best group record, per NBA.com’s NBA Cup explainer. Ties inside a group go to head-to-head first, then point differential in group play, then total points, then last season’s record. A game that goes to overtime counts as a zero differential for both teams.
The wild card is where this game earns its keep. The league’s rules drop head-to-head when second-place teams tie for the wild card, so point differential is the first tiebreaker that applies there. If Boston finishes 3-1 in second place and another East runner-up matches that record, the wild card comes down to total group margin, and Friday put 39 points of it in the bank.
Here is East Group C after Friday night, from the results listed in ESPN’s NBA Cup tracker.
| Team | Group record | Point differential | Games left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Celtics | 2-0 | +53 | at Wizards Nov. 24, Hawks Nov. 27 |
| Hawks | 1-0 | +7 | at Bulls Nov. 13, Hornets Nov. 20, at Celtics Nov. 27 |
| Wizards | 1-1 | +9 | at Bulls Nov. 20, Celtics Nov. 24 |
| Bulls | 0-1 | -14 | Hawks Nov. 13, Wizards Nov. 20, at Hornets Nov. 25 |
| Hornets | 0-2 | -55 | at Hawks Nov. 20, Bulls Nov. 25 |
Boston’s first group win was 125-111 over Chicago on Oct. 30. Atlanta’s only group game so far was a 139-132 win over Washington on Friday. If the Celtics and Hawks both get to Nov. 27 unbeaten, that game decides the group outright. If Boston loses that one and Atlanta wins the group, the Celtics go into the wild card race with this cushion already banked, plus whatever they add in Washington.
Charlotte was thin, and it still counts
I’m not going to pretend this was a full-strength Hornets team. Kon Knueppel, Moussa Diabate and Dennis Schroder were out, per The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach, and Grant Williams was out with a right hamstring strain, per ESPN. Brandon Miller left in the second quarter with right groin soreness and didn’t return, per The Associated Press. Charlotte has now lost six straight.
None of that comes off the ledger. The tiebreaker doesn’t ask who was healthy, and Boston buried the team in front of it from the opening possession. The Celtics led 40-20 after one quarter and 70-39 at the half, per ESPN’s play-by-play. The Hornets shot 27 of 92 from the field and 11 of 50 from three.
The part I liked most came after the starters sat. Tatum checked out with 32.5 seconds left in the third and Boston up 96-57. Himmelsbach reported that he and the other stars watched the fourth from the bench. The reserves, with starter Jordan Walsh joining them midway through, played Charlotte even at 23-23 in the fourth, and the lead peaked at 46 at 115-69 with 3:26 left. A bench that gives back 15 points there costs Boston 15 points of tiebreaker. This one held the line.
Tatum’s 3-point slump ended in one quarter
Tatum scored 18 points in the first quarter, per the AP, and went 5 of 8 from three for the night. He entered Friday shooting a career-low 22.9 percent from three, with 11 makes in seven games, per the Globe. His ESPN game log has him at 0 of 7 in the opener in Detroit and 1 of 7 in the loss in Houston.
He also made all 11 of his free throws and had nine assists. The 29 minutes were his second-fewest of the season, behind only the 28 he played in the 134-99 rout of Chicago on Oct. 26. After I wrote that Boston lost all three of Tatum’s rest stretches in Houston, this is the kind of night Boston needs more of: Tatum does his work in three quarters and the bench handles the fourth.
The team did it with him. Boston made 24 3s at 54.5 percent, both season highs per the Globe, and its 17 first-half 3s tied a franchise record. The Celtics came in 14th in the league in 3-point percentage, per the same report, their lowest standing under Joe Mazzulla. One hot night against a short-handed team won’t fix that, but the margin it produced is permanent.
Pritchard answered the eye question
Payton Pritchard was questionable with a right eye abrasion, per the NBA’s Nov. 5 injury report. He played 23 minutes off the bench and scored 12 points on 4-of-6 shooting from three, with six rebounds and five assists. Boston was plus-27 with him on the floor, second on the team behind Tatum’s plus-36.
I wrote before the game that the Celtics’ bench runs through Pritchard, and Friday backed it up. He ran the second unit, and his step-back 3 in the first quarter made it 24-9. He hit one more 3 in each of the next three quarters, and the eye didn’t slow him. Derrick White added 18 points and five assists in 25 minutes, and Sam Hauser hit 3 of 5 from three.
What comes next
The road trip goes to Milwaukee on Sunday, then Philadelphia on Tuesday and Toronto on Wednesday, per ESPN’s schedule. The next Cup game is Nov. 24 in Washington, and Atlanta comes to TD Garden on Nov. 27.
Win both and the Celtics win Group C, and Friday’s margin never comes up. Lose to Atlanta and finish second, and the 39 points Boston put on Charlotte become its best argument for a December quarterfinal. That is the case for burying a beaten team in November, even with the stars on the bench, and Boston made it.