For a night at least, the Boston Celtics looked like title contenders.
Two days after a gutless home loss to the Houston Rockets, the Celtics won on the road against the Golden State Warriors in a game that many had circled as an NBA Finals preview before the season began.
Heading into Tuesday night, few still viewed it that way because Boston, now 39-26, has played so poorly for much of the season.
Against the defending champion Warriors, the Celtics played like a different team and Gordon Hayward played like a new man. A liability on offense and defense for much of the year while struggling to return from a brutal ankle injury last season, Hayward put it all together in Oakland and went off for 30 points, seven rebounds, four assists and no turnovers in 28 minutes off the bench.
Behind Hayward, the Celtics dominated the Warriors early and ran away with a 128-95 win that possibly saved their season from turning into a dumpster fire.
👏 @gordonhayward sparks the @celtics win in Oakland with 30 PTS off the bench! #CUsRise pic.twitter.com/SErrGlj4ES
— NBA (@NBA) March 6, 2019
When asked what helped the team turn things around, the mercurial Kyrie Irving credited the team’s cross-country flight to California.
“That long plane ride helped us out,” Irving said. “I’ll just say that. That long plane ride helped us out. We needed it. It was just we were going to get to a point where we were just going to get tired of fighting each other, fighting the outside world. And it doesn’t even really matter. So, we just wanted to come out here and just play basketball. This is our sanctuary. And we have to do everything to protect it. We can’t let anybody infiltrate it.”
On the other side of the ball, the Warriors – who have lost four of their last six games – are still looking for answers.
“I’d love to have some magic potion and say we can come out and play with better energy and better discipline and kind of rectify it, but we’ve got to, at some point, stop talking about it and figure it out,” Stephen Curry, who finished with 23 points, said.
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