A 27-point second half from a hot-shooting Anfernee Simons helped the Celtics stave off what could’ve been a letdown game with a 115-101 win over the Bulls at TD Garden. <\/p>\n
This latest triumph for the Celtics came less than 48 hours after the Green’s season-best 146-point explosion in Los Angeles on Saturday night, and fresh off a flight back to Boston that left the Celtics’ legs a little heavy. It was noticeable throughout the night, too, with almost every starter having a rougher-than-usual shooting night. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think I understood coming into the game like how tough the game was going to be, mentally and physically,” Simons said following Boston’s victory. “Just coming off a long road trip coming from the west coast, being on the plane all day, and we knew that it was a possibility that we might struggle a little bit offensively. <\/p>\n
“But I think defensively through most of the first half, I think we played great. We were getting stops and you know making the game, and I think that\u2019s what helped us.”<\/p>\n
For Simons, all 27 of his points came in the second half, and with connections on eight of his 14 attempts from three-point range. That tied a Celtic franchise record for most three-point shots made in a single half, while his 27 second-half points were the most by a Celtics bench player in a single half since Ricky Davis dropped 26 in Feb. 2004. <\/p>\n
Behind Simons, the Celtics got a solid 21-point effort out of Payton Pritchard behind an 8-for-17 shooting night. Pritchard even treated the Garden crowd to another buzzer-beating shot to close out the first half. <\/p>\n
The win was Boston’s eighth in their last nine games, and their 13th in their last 16 games overall. And with their victory coupled with a New York loss on Monday night, the Celtics moved into second place in the Eastern Conference standings. <\/p>\n
The C’s get back to work Wednesday night against the Nuggets at TD Garden. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 27-point second half from a hot-shooting Anfernee Simons helped the Celtics stave off what could’ve been a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3766],"tags":[4329,7,45,75,3798,46,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-519850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-anfernee-simons","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-boston-celtics","12":"tag-bostonceltics","13":"tag-celtics","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115847308786735891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}