BOSTON — The Celtics would have had their hands full with the Rockets remade roster on Saturday night even if they were playing at full strength. Coming on the heels of four games in six nights, Boston didn’t stand much of a chance against a well-rested Rockets squad.
The visitors took a double-digit lead midway through the first quarter and did not look back, leading by as many as 36 points in the 128-101 rout of Boston at TD Garden.
Payton Pritchard put it succinctly when asked about takeaways from a game when Boston was seemingly drawing dead from the opening tip.
“I don’t even know if there is a takeaway for this game,” Pritchard said. “Kind of turned the page. They kind of punked us. We gotta get ready for the next one.”
The Celtics had won three straight games before the ugly defeat, turning around a challenging start to the season before the abrupt halt on Saturday night. Celtics players and coaches seemed intent on not letting the convincing defeat derail the team’s progress heading into Saturday night.
“Sometimes, even when we had a championship-level team, you got popped on some nights like this and you just turn the page, get ready for the next one,” Pritchard said. “It’s 82 games. It’s a lot of traveling, a lot of back-to-backs at times. So it can be tiring. I think they came off two nights rest. They showed it tonight and killed us.”
Even Joe Mazzulla seemed content to be happy to tip his cap and move on after watching the Rockets shoot a scoring hot 65 percent from 3-point range.
“Obviously it wasn’t our night,” Mazzulla said. “Rockets played well, good team, well-coached, They were prepared, and this wasn’t our night tonight. So to me, that happens over the course of the season, and so it’ll be more important about how we respond on Monday at shootaround and in the game on Monday night.”
The road gets a little bit easier for Boston over the next two games as the rebuilding Jazz and Wizards come to town, before the schedule ramps up again for Boston. The Celtics won’t get two days off in a row until November 14, so there simply isn’t time to focus much on any loss as the team battles to get back above .500 after an 0-3 start. Pritchard acknowledged the fatigue but looked ready already to turn the page by the time he walked out of the locker room Saturday night.
“Maybe we made fatigued decisions on the court and stuff like that,” Pritchard said. “We came ready to play, but we got popped tonight. Move on and get ready for the next one.”
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