Celtics ride away with 99-86 win over Warriors

The Boston Celtics rode off with a 99-86 win over the Golden State Warriors tonight.

Put the pitchforks and torches down, Dub Nation. Sure, this was one of the more frustrating losses of the season, but let’s keep some perspective. The Warriors have been on the road for eight days, playing five games. Though this counts as a home game, it was just one more stop on their road trip, since they will be flying out to Minnesota tonight to start a back-to-back on Friday.

To put it more succinctly, this is the most difficult stretch of the season. And they’re doing it without Kevin Durant and with slightly chilled Splash Brothers. Yet they’ve kept it at .500 for the trip which is not the worst thing in the world.

Are you off of the ledge yet? Good, let’s talk about that hot mess of a game.

Let’s be honest, the Celtics outplayed them on both ends of the court tonight. They were sharper, more focused, and they had more than two people contributing on offense, which is kind of a big deal.

Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson had 23 and 25 points respectively. Aside from their meager 3-point percentages, they had a solid game and outscored the rest of their team 48-38. There were minutes-long stretches where no one else even took a shot.

Half of the bench was scoreless while the other half put up 17 to the Celtics’ 30. The team was limited to 12 points in the fourth quarter as Boston went on run after run due to sloppy defense and sloppier ball handling by the Warriors. Steve Kerr finally waived the white flag with a minute and a half left to play.

The Celtics were a rebounding machine, but ultimately scored more points off of the obscene turnovers committed by the Warriors. There is a section of my fourth quarter game notes that just says “turnovers. Turnovers. TURNOVERS.” in progressively larger and larger font in lieu of scoring notes - because there were none.

A positive — this fan made almost as many 3-point shots as the Warriors tonight and won a car:

Also, Klay Thompson made his 200th 3-pointer tonight, for the fifth season in a row.

Otherwise, not a great night for Dub Nation. They even allowed a chant of “MVP!” for Isaiah Thomas at Oracle Arena and that’s basically all you need to know about how bad this one was.

That said, they retain the best record in the NBA and a game and a half lead over San Antonio. All things considered, there’s not much you can do except tip your cap to the Celtics and roll along.